Smooth Jazz Fails
by MarkKB
Summary: Doug was unsatisfied at working at Aperture, tired of all the secrecy. Little did he know of the events that would cascade and conspire together to seal his fate.
1. Another Day

**A/N:** So, Writer's Block decided to pay me a visit, so in a fit of _Lab Rat_-induced madness I decided to try and make it leave by writing a little of this. And then a little more. And then a story started to form. And then I was all _curses!_ because the last thing I need is to be working on _another_ story. Ah, well!

Anyway, the story begins a few years before the flashback sequences in _Lab Rat_. The lead-up to the events in the comic intrigued me, so I thought I might explore it some more. Hopefully I can weave an interesting-enough tale, then!

The Portal/Half Life universe, of course, belongs to the fine people at Valve.

* * *

><p><strong><span>Smooth Jazz Fails<span>  
>Chapter 1: Another Day<strong>

It was the melting-pot of the world's greatest minds; a central locus for innovation and invention; a modern day renaissance. It was where scientists went to work on the next _next_ best thing, even before the next best thing had arrived. It was where everyone who was anyone in the scientific community would go to share ideas and get their hands dirty on _real_ science, as opposed to whatever those nobodies at Black Mesa or whatever-it-was worked on. And of course, the science at Aperture Laboratories was very real – and very dangerous. But what's life without risks? If life gives you lemons, use the decaying remains of those lemons to invent the best damn anti-lemon device possible!

Well, at least, that was the marketing. And to be honest, it was this ideal (and quirky) view of how Aperture worked that Douglas had fell in love with all those years ago when he worked there as an intern.

But now… well, he was tired of how things worked. He was tired of the long hours, of snappy program managers, of being shuffled from office to office for no apparent reason, of working on projects for six months at a time and then being told they were cancelled – and sometimes finding out later that some of them had been handed to a different team. He was tired of how cavalier some of the higher-ups seemed about handling dangerous technology. And he was tired of the secrecy.

Everyone at Aperture knew something was being worked on in the west end of the complex. They knew the scale of the project was massive – some rumoured that the cost overruns alone ran into the billions, never mind the original estimates. They also knew Aperture could afford it – the company had been ridiculously successful over the years, and some had said they could survive twenty years even if no-one bought another product. But cost wasn't the thing on the scientist's mind – it was more the fact that no-one seemed to know exactly _what_ was going on.

Some of his program managers had worked on the project. He knew by the way they reacted - they'd been extraordinarily evasive when asked even simple questions about what they'd done that day, a rarity at the laboratory where everyone was eager to share exactly how they were changing the world.

He'd seen one of them once, pushing a levitating trolley carrying a large chrome rectangular prism with smooth rounded corners and a large cavity in the centre – what appeared to be a bulkier and larger version of the casing built for the security cameras that lined the premises. But when asked what the shell was destined to be, the program manager mumbled something about artificial intelligence research and then commented on the weather.

_"Terry, I work on artificial intelligence,"_ he'd pointed out. But Terry had only nodded half-heartedly and then reemphasised how sunny it was outside and didn't you see that cloud that looked like a rabbit at lunch? And then he had disappeared down the hallway, checking back every few doors to make certain Douglas wasn't following.

Reality arose from memory, and he found he was now at the employees' storage area. He opened the door, and stepped inside.

There it was. His locker. The one refuge of sanity in this asylum, the one place he knew exactly what to expect.

He fiddled with the lock, flung the door open and reached for a transparent blue container. Inside were the things that stabilised his mind, that allowed him to focus on the task at hand.

He unscrewed the lid and tipped the container ever so slightly. Out onto his outstretched hand popped two capsules, their smooth surface reflecting the light from fluorescent lights placed far above him. Down he gulped them, and up reached his hand to grasp the water bottle in the cavity before him.

He took a swig. The cool liquid flowed down his throat, propelling the now dissolving capsules down even further into the inner depths of his digestive tract, down on their mission of bringing peace and order to his own chaotic system.

Another day, another pill, another length of sanity in a place of madness.

He returned the container of pills and the water bottle to his locker, and sighed. Life at Aperture had definitely not been what he'd expected.

His eyes fell on a sheet of paper that had been neatly stacked against the inner wall of the locker. Every day he'd look at it, stare at the distinctive logo on the letterhead, and mumble the name of the company it bore – _Black Mesa_. He'd received it two months ago in a 'recruitment drive' from a shady character who'd been later fired for insubordination, and since then it had lay in his locker, ignored but not forgotten.

Despite his musings about leaving Aperture, he could not bring himself to fill out the form. His only friends worked here, and with cheerful banter and idle chit-chat, they were what made continuing to go to work each day worthwhile. There was no guarantee that things would be any better at Black Mesa either – from snatches of conversations he'd gathered that they had their own secrets, their own bossy directors, their own overworked scientists – and without the people he knew and trusted, he doubted he could work there very long.

And despite the demanding conditions at Aperture, he was still doing the things he loved – pure and lovely _science_. Coding and programming the unknown, his hands flowing across keyboards like beautiful symphonies being composed. It was those times where he could forget the cacophony that surrounded him, and he and his creation could find order together.

And yet, he couldn't throw the letter away either. Something was nagging him at the back of his mind – telling him that he should take the job, that he'd be better off there. He didn't know what, but he suspected it was just his reason telling him that anything is better than being worked into the ground.

"Hey, er… Rattmann, is it?"

It was Jeremy, one of the newer scientists on his team. Jeremy reminded Douglas so much of himself all those years ago – brazen, excited, tireless, well-kept, hair viciously combed and appearance spotless – as if it mattered. Not yet brandished with a cynical mind.

"Please, call me Doug." The words escaped his lips automatically – so many people called him by his last name simply because it was so easy to remember. But he didn't like 'Rattmann' – it sounded more like some mutated superhero than a respectable scientist. Then again, 'Doug' wasn't really a sciency name either, but at least it was _somewhat_ better.

And he'd long given up trying to get people to call him 'Douglas'.

"Okay, er… Doug." For a moment he looked as if he was trying to commit that snippet to memory before continuing. "Er, the program manager… well, he sort of wants an ETA on, um, directive three on the Code Blue… thingy."

"He does? He knows the answer." Directive three had been a thorn in the development of Code Blue almost since the beginning. Initially it had seemed simple enough – almost ridiculously simple, in fact – but as estimate after estimate flew by, they began to realise that it'd probably take years until it was completed. They began devoting more time to the other directives, and they no longer gave estimates for number three in their reports.

Jeremy looked nervously to the side. "He's been getting, um, really… well, _insistent_. More so than, well, before, I guess."

"You can't rush science."

It was one of the few things that made plain and simple sense among the posters that lined the walls of Aperture. History had shown, time and again, that rushing science just earned disaster.

"Alright, then." He paused for a moment. "Also, another thing – do you have any advice?"

"Advice?" Doug was genuinely surprised – no-one had ever asked him for advice before.

"Well, my counsellor, back in my home town, you see, recommended I should, er… get some advice from my coworkers. About working and stuff. Well, not working as in my job – I can, um, well, obviously I can do that – but sorta… navigating around how things work around here, I guess."

He looked at Doug expectantly. But Doug could only think of one thing.

He should run. He should get a nice job at some big-name software company where he could put his degrees to good use (and more to the point, do so _safely_), not here at Aperture creating mad science. After all, science consumes one after a while – and Jeremy was too young for that, far too young. He had his whole life ahead of him. He didn't realise that it takes over, slowly but totally, and once it grabs hold of your tongue, there's nothing to do. It takes the mind whole, again and again and again.

But perhaps, he reasoned, he was just projecting his own insecurities on to science? No need to make such an abstract concept the villain.

"Sorry, I can't think of anything right now. Maybe come back to me later?"

"Okay then." He glanced down. "Uh, see you."

He spun around on the spot, paused for a second, then strode out and down the hallway.

Doug watched after him for a bit, then returned to his locker. Whether or not it was inherently science's fault, there was no doubt about it – he couldn't imagine doing anything else. He was afraid he'd be stuck at Aperture for the rest of his life, but that thought also comforted him as well. Aperture was familiar and friendly as well as hostile and foreign. Behind the chaos was a certain order, one that, in brief moments, he could almost grasp.

He closed his locker door with a clang. He'd always have time to change his mind.


	2. Reconstructing Lunch

**Smooth Jazz Fails  
><strong>**Chapter 2: Reconstructing Lunch**

_Ratta ratta ratta ratta ratta…_

Keys clicked and clacked and echoed throughout the small room where four software engineers were cramped together, all hunched over their keyboards, typing as if their life depended on it. Green text blared across Doug Rattmann's screen, his fingers bending back and forth like the metal stamps on automatic typewriters, finding the letters as if he himself was programmed for the task.

To be honest, he wouldn't be surprised if the hardware was as old as those relics of word processing. Aperture was an odd mix – here they were working on technology five years _at least_ ahead of anything else, and they were doing it on ancient computers using FORTRAN and vi. He was sure other scientists got more advanced computers, but first they'd have to prove that Code Blue was worth the investment.

He finished inputting the variables, and entered in a rather long security pin to gain access to the last compiled data. The screen flashed, and the text "Simulation #2535 – Vivid M-Base" appeared at the top, with "Running on mainframe, please wait" below it.

Code Blue was a codename for a codename, if that made any sense. Its primary codename was 'Vivid', chosen long ago for reasons now forgotten – it was used in 'secure' areas, where the risk of being overheard was almost nil. 'Code Blue' was the term used in casual conversation with Aperture staff.

The rule, thought up by the founder of Aperture, was an attempt to dissuade informants from other companies from stealing information by "confusing the heck outta them", as one of his workmates had quoted when Doug had first arrived at the company, and it was put in place after some suspiciously-timed inventions from a rival laboratory were released to the public that _just happened_ to be very similar to what they themselves had been working on. He didn't know himself if it worked or not, but rules were rules for a reason.

The computer grunted loudly, as if straining to send the information that Doug had commanded it to. He just patiently tapped his fingers on the desk – doing _anything_ on these computers and expecting them to be done quickly was a folly, and because of that Doug had developed a keen sense of patience over the years.

"Hey, Doug, you running the simulation?"

Doug spun in his chair so that he could face the man sitting across the room from him, a middle-aged and slowly-balding scientist named Stephen. "Yeah, it's going through now." He looked at his watch. "It'll probably be done by lunch."

Stephen had been working at Aperture for somewhat longer than Rattmann, and he had the wrinkles across his face to show for it. Doug didn't know whether it was out of necessity – that you needed someone to lean on to survive this place – or because they both shared a similar passion for science, programming and robotics, but after various projects together the two had become close friends.

Indeed, if there was anything good to come out of his time at Aperture, it was certainly the people he'd met and the friendships he had made.

"How about we leave early?" Stephen suggested. "I'm pretty much finished with the Context Module for now, and I daresay Jeremy could do with a break."

Doug glanced to the side – Jeremy was splayed out across his keyboard, ginger hair roughed up as if he'd gone through a wind tunnel, cheek pressed against a dozen keys. Sammy, the developer sitting next to him, nudged him in the shoulder.

"_Wassat!_" He sprung upright, his arms flailing through the air. Stephen hid his mouth under his hand so no-one could see him grinning, and Doug himself couldn't help feeling a small snicker rise from his stomach.

"Er, I wasn't sleeping!" he said frantically. "Um, that is to say, I was, but I really didn't mean it because I had a late night and then I couldn't sleep and, well, one moment I was working and the next I'm waking up and then I was telling you why-"

"No, it's fine," said Stephen, still trying (and slightly failing) to control his emotions. "We've all done that once or twice. Though I might recommend investing in some sleeping pills, they've helped me quite a bit."

"Oh. Um, well… thanks." He turned around and rapidly hit a key combination a few dozen times; as he did the endless lines of letters his head had inputted disappeared.

Stephen stood up, strode across the room and looked over the work Jeremy had done before he'd fallen asleep. "I'd say you've done quite a bit today, at least enough to fill your quota."

"But there's still the debugging of the Decision Module I have to run, and then the Personality Matrix needs fine-"

"It's almost lunch. We'll go for a bite – there's nothing like some food and a nice cool drink to wake you up – and if you really want to keep working, that's up to you, but if you decide to take a sick day I wouldn't blame you."

But Jeremy was adamant that he'd finish the day's work, and nothing they said dissuaded him. He did, however, agree to catch up with them at lunch, "just after I finish this subroutine."

"Alright then, we're off," Stephen announced, and with that the trio left the small cramped room for the open spaces of the cafeteria.

* * *

><p>"So then he got so mad he just <em>threw<em> the golf club at the lake! And then the bag as well!"

Stephen chortled as he told a story about his fishing pals going on a vacation to some place or another. Doug smiled and feigned a slight interest – he was more interested in his food, and in getting the simulation results back so he could debug what had happened _this_ time.

He prodded what looked like a mini sausage embedded in his mashed potatoes with his fork. It didn't seem to do anything, so he decided that it wasn't dangerous and dug his fork into it.

THUMP.

Stephen's large hand thwacked across his back, and Doug gasped for air.

"- eh, then? I mean, Doug here'd never throw three-hundred dollars of equipment away like that, no matter how angry he got!"

"Yeah," he said hoarsely, rubbing his shoulder. Sitting next to Stephen at lunch carried an occupational hazard – that he might decide to 'pat' you on the back if he thought the need to emphasise something with some literal 'oomph'.

"Of course, 'e's the calm one. I've never seen him loose his temper, not once."

"Er, thanks."

He didn't think it was much of a compliment. His work _demanded_ that he remain as calm as possible, especially after having so many simulations go wrong.

"Well, anyway… hey, over here!"

Doug glanced to the front of the cafeteria – Jeremy was searching around for his coworkers, while attempting to balance his lunch tray, a pencil, and a large notebook.

"Ah!" He sidestepped over to their table, carefully trying to avoid a copious combination of mashed potato, mini-sausages, peas and tomato sauce from ending up being splayed over his notebook's cover as the tray upon which they were placed precariously leaned between his arms.

"Er… hey… guys…," he said between aborted attempts to slope his arms in just the right way so the tray would slide neatly onto the surface below.

After about the third of these, Doug stood up, grabbed the tray and placed it onto the table.

"Er, thanks, Mr Rattm- uh, Doug."

He sat down, leafed through his notebook until he reached the page he was looking through, and began scribbling down notes with his right hand, all the while clumsily scooping potato and then attempting to eat it with his left.

"Hey, hey, slow down!" Stephen grabbed the notebook and scanned the page he'd been scrawling in. "The Personality Matrix again? Lunch is a time for _getting away_ from work – you know, for telling stories and finding out how your co-worker's life has been. This can wait."

He slid him an aluminium can across the table – label completely white but for the prominent 'Aperture Science' logo in the middle. "You're stressed enough as it is. Calm down, have a soda. Tell me how you've been."

Jeremy looked at the can he had caught in his hand. "Well, I've been okay, I guess."

"Done anything interesting lately?"

Jeremy glanced downwards, as if attempting to analyse his deepest memories.

"Well, there was a really weird bug I fixed the other day-"

"You need to get out more. Tell you what – this weekend we're going kayaking. _All of us_," he continued, most likely prompted by Doug suddenly turning his head away. "Think of it as an official unofficial moralising team-building excursion. Goodness knows, some of us could use some morale."

Doug knew there was no way out of this – Stephen was a very effective guilt-tripper, and all refusing now would do was delay the time until he'd finally agree. He was also pretty sure the '_some of us_' was aimed mainly at him – he'd discussed his issues with Aperture many times with Stephen in the mornings as they made their way through the winding complex to work, often over a cup of hot chocolate.

"All right," Doug sighed.

"Sammy?"

"Huh?"

Sammy had thus far been idly stirring his peas into his potato mash, not really paying attention to much of anything. In general, he was usually quiet, keeping out of the way of others' conversation, so he seemed surprised to hear his name.

"Want to go kayaking with us on Saturday?"

"Er…"

He glanced to Doug, who mouthed '_You might as well_' back to him.

"Fine, I'll go."

"Perfect." He retrieved his satellite phone from his briefcase. "I'll make arrangements at the lodge, and then we can plan what we'll do there."

* * *

><p>If there was one thing Doug couldn't get used to, it was the almost-empty hallways.<p>

One would normally expect the halls to be bustling after lunch had ended. But Aperture Laboratories was a absolutely _humongous_ complex, and people had jobs all over the place. As such, Doug only passed a trickle of people as he and Jeremy leisurely made their way to the Mainframe Printout room.

He glanced to his left. Jeremy wore a slightly nervous look on his face, making it quite clear exactly how many times he'd ever been on a boat.

He should comfort him.

"I wouldn't worry. Stephen might be a bit overbearing, but his heart's in the right place."

Jeremy gave him a small smile, then returned to examining his navel.

"And besides, I doubt he'd choose a lake that's _too_ radioactive."

"_What?_"

"Sorry, just a joke," he quickly stammered, giving a sheepish smile.

They walked together in silence for a bit, every now and then noticing a scientist bustling past him, busily making their way to wherever-it-was they worked on. Doug spent the time examining the panels on the ceiling, and posters on the wall.

And then, he heard someone talking.

"…I know that, but I doubt Blue will finish by then, and besides, Code Amber's much further along."

"_Quickly, Jeremy,_" he whispered, ducking behind a corner. Jeremy looked blank for a moment, and then, realising where he'd gone, quickly joined him.

"_What's happening?_" he whispered.

"_Shh,_" he replied.

"Terrance, are you sure?" said the voice. "_That_ soon? I don't think even we-"

He stopped. It seemed obvious he was on the phone with whoever this guy 'Terrance' was, and that he'd just cut him off.

"Yes, I know what Cave said before he-"

_Cave_. It sounded familiar, but he'd never known anyone by that name. And it's one he should remember if he did - what kind of a name was that anyway?

The man sighed. "Okay, we'll tell the Amber crew to speed up the process a bit." He paused. "Yes, I know you're sorry, sir."

A thought suddenly struck him. What if 'Terrance' was his former manager Terry?

"Okay, bye."

_Oh crud._

Doug lightly ran a few steps, and then turned around when he realised Jeremy wasn't following.

"_Jeremy, come on!_"

"_Oh!_"

The two rushed down two stretches of corridor before stopping beside a poster proclaiming the benefits of cake to your health.

"_Okay, we've got to make it look like we haven't heard anything. Just walk normally._"

Jeremy nodded silently, although it was clear from the rather frightened look on his face exactly how many times he'd overheard something he wasn't meant to.

He started walking. He had it all planned out in his head. They'd just idly pass by, and the man'd be none the wiser.

There was the man who'd been on the phone – at least, it'd _had_ to have been him. He was tall and rigid, with hardly any hair on his head at all, except for a ring of small bushy tufts around the back of his head. His face looked slightly sour – or was it tired?

The man's head itself looked… rigid? He didn't know if it was the right word, but it _sounded_ right.

They were almost past him. He glanced at the man as he passed – he didn't seem to see them.

_Success!_

"Hey, hang on a moment."

_Crud._

The pair turned around. The man was now walking back to them.

_Ohcrudwhatifhe'dseenthemohcrudohcrud-_

_Pull yourself together,_ he ordered himself. If he continued along those lines- well, racing thoughts was one of the things he needed _least_ right now.

He smiled as the man approached, although he was sure it was a rather awkward-looking one. Jeremy, on the other hand, had clearly quickened his breathing – he clearly didn't like being under pressure, and Doug couldn't blame him at all.

"You're from the Blue guys, aren't you?"

Doug sighed with relief, and he could hear Jeremy now taking long, deep breaths now that he was clearly safe.

"Er, what's his problem?"

"He'd been hyperventilating. It's been tough these last few weeks." It was probably not true, but it was as convenient a lie as he could come up with.

"Well, anyway, it's nice to meet you. I'm Henry Staltworth."

He held out his hand, and Doug nervously took it.

"I'm Doug Rattmann, and this here is Jeremy-"

At the mention of 'Rattmann', his eyes lit up. "I _knew_ I recognised you! I hear you're doing great things with artificial intelligence."

"Management doesn't seem to think so," said Doug.

"Oh, they're just a bunch of old codgers. I know the problems - we're working on a little project of our own, and it's a pain in the neck to get _anything_ done."

"Oh, really? What are you doing?"

Henry's eyes shifted from side to side. "Uh… it's just some work on AI, really. Nothing much."

"What kind of work?"

"Er, well… it's top secret. But let's just say we're hoping to make your job a bit easier with the stuff that we're doing."

"I see."

He didn't. It was the kind of vague non-answer Terry had given him. Were they working on alternates of the modules he was? Perhaps management had decided to let a fresh pair of eyes on Directive Three – but again, he was left out of the loop.

Then again, maybe it was just a different kind of AI that would benefit _them_ in some way, although he couldn't exactly see what kind of AI would be helpful to their work. Maybe a virtual assistant?

But what about that casing?

He felt as if there was some kind of grand puzzle in front of him, and he had found only a few of the pieces – and they just looked like patches of colour, with nothing to indicate where exactly they fell into place.

He'd have to think about it more later.

"Well," he said, turning slightly towards the direction of the Printout room. "I've got to collect some printouts, so if you don't mind-"

"Not at all – but I hope to see you again sometime, okay? See you later!"

And with that, he strode off.

"Well, that was _odd_," said Doug.

"I wonder what he does?"

Doug glanced at his watch.

"I don't know, but we don't have the time to ponder - we should've been on our way back by now."

And off he went, sprinting through the hallways.

Jeremy paused for a moment, not exactly realising what had happened.

"Hey, hang on… wait up!" he shouted, rushing as fast as he could after him.


	3. Caroline

**Smooth Jazz Fails  
><strong>**Chapter 3: Caroline**

Like many previous mornings, Douglas stood by his car in the Aperture Laboratories carpark, staring across a seemingly endless field of wheat. And, like many previous mornings, he sighed, hung his ID placard over his neck, and began the long trek through the field.

While Aperture had a normal front entrance like most companies, that building was for low-security personnel and projects only, such as their turret manufacturing and automated security camera projects. As such, the building was separated from the rest of the complex by five meters of solid concrete; high-security projects, like Code Blue, had to use the wheat field entrance instead.

Which meant walking through almost a kilometre of self-healing wheat.

Although, Doug had to admit, it _was_ kind of cool to work at a place which was almost _entirely _underground. It was almost like the headquarters of some secret spy organisation, like CONTROL of _Get Smart_ – a television series he'd watched in his youth – except instead of a telephone box in the middle of a office building, it was a garage in the middle of a wheat field. And no-one knew exactly _where_ the garage was, except for Aperture employees – or, to be precise, the information was given to them on sign-in in the main building, and then wiped from their memories as they re-entered the car park at day's end.

Of course, all this was rather inconvenient as well. Still, that was the price of security, right?

There it was.

The shack had the appearance of any other shack Doug had ever seen – walls of corrugated iron, rusted orange with age. In fact, the only thing that was out of the ordinary was a keypad and palmprint scanner.

When he reached the door, Doug swiped his card and typed in his 45-character PIN.

"_Password accepted. You may now enter."_

The doors wooshed open, and he stepped aboard the elevator that lay beyond; once he had done so, it began to descend, shuddering as it did.

"Welcome to Aperture Science, loyal employee _[INSERT SUBJECT HERE]_!" greeted a male voice from speaker embedded in the elevator walls. "Please keep your hands, feet, head, or other appendages inside the elevator while it is in motion."

The voice paused before continuing.

"You have been working for us for – _nine nine nine nine_-"

Doug rolled his eyes. The Computerised Announcement System had been buggy for years - while it had worked fine for him at first, sometime during his twelfth year it had started behaving as it did now. He figured that it was due to a database with too small a field limit for the 'daysWorkingAtAperture' column, as he'd heard similar stories when he'd asked around – a simple fix if anything, but the management probably didn't see the point in pouring money into fixing an internally used basic AI when far more advanced ones were being developed at that very moment, even if it'd literally be hiring an intern for about five minutes to resize the limit.

Of course, why they even needed to be informed of how long they had been working at Aperture? Perhaps it was some kind of debugging routine that hadn't been taken out, or maybe HR thought it'd somehow increase the retention rate of employees or something. Doug couldn't see it working, though.

"Please remember," continued the Announcer over the endless stream of 'nines', "to take every precaution as you change the world with your contribution to science – your wellbeing is important to us. Also, if you see a regulatory or federal official of any kind, please let the management know _immediately_. We cannot stress that enough."

He wasn't exactly sure _why_ that part was in place – perhaps they were experimenting with not-exactly-legal substances somewhere else in the building, or maybe it was just a precaution. Whatever it was, he could safely say that it probably didn't affect him.

"A mental and physical wellness exercise is scheduled for you in – _two_ – months. Participation is mandatory. Good luck!"

The lift shuddered and slowed to a halt.

"Welcome to Level 2: Computer and Programming – _nineteen ninety two_. The date is the – _third_ – of – _September_ – in the year – _nineteen ninety nine_ – and the time is – _eight thirteen a.m._ When the door opens, please proceed to your designated working environment."

Doug rapped his foot against the bottom of the lift. This was starting to take too long.

"Thank you for listening to these announcements. Good-bye, and good luck."

_Finally!_ thought Doug as the doors swooshed opened. He may have had to stand through this every single morning, but some mornings he felt rather impatient at everything, and this was one of them.

But what he saw at the end of the corridor was most unlike _any_ previous morning he could remember.

It'd been about a month or two since Doug had met with Henry, and since then he'd not seen him _at all _– not in the hallways, nor in the cafeteria. There'd been a few moments when he'd almost thought he'd forgotten his pills, and it'd all been a hoax that his mind made up – and he'd have to admit, it _did_ sound like the beginnings of some whack-job conspiracy theory. But whenever he asked Jeremy, he would confirm that what they had seen had been real.

And indeed, there Henry was, standing behind a sheet-covered table, upon which sat baskets upon baskets of _cupcakes_.

"Hey Doug! Knew I'd run into you again!"

Doug narrowed his gaze – it was kind of hard to miss someone when you waited in front of _the only way in_.

"We've been handing out cupcakes to everyone. We've got plenty, so take two if you want!"

Doug walked over the table, picked out a rather large one, and examined it carefully.

"What's the occasion?"

"No occasion! Well, I mean, apart from the fact that Ms. Gladys over there decided she wanted to give everyone a small thank-you for their service here, that's all."

Doug glanced in the direction of where he was pointing. Behind a rather tall stack of cupcake baskets stood a rather tall woman, probably in her late-thirties or early-forties, with long, bushy black hair and wearing a rather conservative red dress.

"Aperture," she said, "has had a long tradition of helping those who help us help the world. We are only as strong as our employees, and if they aren't happy, then we aren't doing our job, and they can't create great science. That's why we put this together – I want all of our employees to feel appreciated, even if…"

She stopped suddenly, and her expression softened, as if she was remembering something fondly.

Something about her looked familiar, but Doug couldn't quite put his finger on it. She was obviously some kind of management personal, and high ranking, if she had the authority to pull this kind of thing off.

"What about the employees in other sections?"

"We're staggering this out so we do a section per day," said Ms. Gladys. "Yesterday was Machinery, and tomorrow is... Turret Production and Planning, I believe."

She glanced at Henry, who nodded.

At that moment, something behind Henry caught Doug's eye - a rather familiar portrait indeed, as there were quite a few of them in various places in the complex. It depicted a young woman, perhaps only a few years out of college; below it, etched into a bronze plaque, were the words _Our Leader_.

Then something clicked. His eyes darted to the woman standing next to the cupcake table, and then back to the portrait.

_Of course!_ he thought, mentally slapping himself.

"So, she's the…"

Henry nodded. "Caroline Gladys, CEO and chairman of our fine company for about fifteen years now. And might I say, doing a bang-up job, ma'am."

"You're still not getting a raise, Henry," replied the woman, smiling cheekily.

Doug extended his hand. "Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Gladys," he said, somewhat disbelieving of the fact that he hadn't even seen, let alone met, the head of the company before now, even for a second.

"It's my pleasure," Caroline said, smiling as she shook it. "Really, it is."

"This here is Doug Rattmann," Henry told Caroline. "He's working on Code Blue's artificial intelligence, and from what I've seen they're doing some pretty good work."

"Thanks, but it's really nothing." He glanced at Henry. "I guess I'll see you around."

"Well-"

"Sooner than you think, Mr. Rattmann," Caroline interrupted. "This week I'll be running a personal inspection of every Aperture project – just to see how far everything's coming along first-hand. You guys will probably be today, right Mr. Staltworth?"

Henry picked up a clipboard on the table and flipped through a dozen-or-so pages.

"Sometime after lunch," he confirmed.

"Ah. Okay."

That might be a problem. While it was true that Code Blue had rapidly improved in the months since the last time he'd met Henry, the truth is it was still nowhere close to ready. It seemed as if every time they solved one problem, another cropped up, and it was especially the case with Directive Three.

"Well, then, Mr. Rattmann, I'll expect to see you later. And working hard, might I add." She gave him a quick smile.

"Yes, ma'am," replied Doug, sheepishly smiling back. He gave her a not-quite-serious salute, and then continuing on his way.

Why was the CEO doing personal inspections _today_? In all his years at Aperture, not once had such an event taken place. Perhaps it was some kind of internal anniversary or something? Maybe the cupcakes were to soften the blow for underworking employees who might later find themselves unemployed?

Or perhaps the cupcakes had some kind of experimental chemical in it? While he'd not experienced it himself, he recalled rumours of Aperture testing on employees, long ago. _What_, he did not know; nor did he know if there was any truth to them at all.

He stopped and stared at the cupcake for a moment, then deposited it in the nearest incinerator bin. Best not to risk it.

He continued walking down the hallway, pondering how it all fit in to the larger picture. Whether kind gesture, emotional padding or employee testing, he had an uneasy feeling about the whole thing in the pit of his stomach.

His gut told him there was something deeper involved.

* * *

><p>As he typed, Doug tried to ignore the light bulb above him flickering on and off.<p>

It was late in the day, but still they hadn't been visited for inspection. For a moment, Doug briefly entertained the notion that the delay was intentional, intended to make them even more anxious than they already were, but then he threw the thought aside – the impression he'd got from Caroline was that she was different from all the other managers – she seemed genuinely kind and reasonable.

But maybe that was just an illusion? Perhaps she was just as manipulative and uncaring as the rest-

_Focus_, he told himself. Now was the time for work, not for questioning people's motives.

Doug glanced to his side. Jeremy was typing furiously, so fast that the computer could not keep up, and he'd have to stop every few minutes to let the characters finish filling the screen. And then he'd notice five or ten typographical mistakes and have to go back and correct them one by one.

"Hey, you don't need to go so fast," he offered as Jeremy typed "_NEURALLINK_APPLY(PKT, 3300)_" without the u and the second p and with an extra zero for the fourth time in a row.

"I know, I kn- well, it's just because – I mean, aren't you as well, I'd be surprised if anyone wasn't, you know? Big boss coming over to see how you're doing, looking over our work – but I'm just so _nervous!_"

"We all are," began Doug, but Jeremy continued to rattle on.

"-what if she doesn't like my work, huh? What if it's not good enough? I couldn't think of- if I had to leave-"

Doug placed a hand on Jeremy's shoulder and looked him in the eye.

"You're not a moron, Jeremy. Aperture hired you because they thought you were among the best. If you weren't good enough, you wouldn't be here."

Jeremy gave him a weak smile, but the nervousness in his eyes remained.

Doug sighed and returned to typing. He himself didn't quite believe what he had told Jeremy – the management, in his experience, didn't care much how good one was, because if they did they wouldn't shuffle him around every few years. If they cared, they wouldn't have forced him to do that stint maintaining their bulletin board for half a year – a menial job at best – and then move him somewhere else because he 'didn't fulfil what they were looking for in a BBS admin' – obviously not what they had thought six months before.

But he _did_ still remember his gruelling entry interview, so he did feel there was some truth to it. Anyone who survived that had to be better than most people.

He also had wanted to assure himself of those things, as well as Jeremy. It hadn't worked, at least for him – the anxious feeling in the pit of his stomach still remained.

* * *

><p>Half an hour had passed when a knocking sound interrupted their silent working.<p>

"Ah, good to meet you all at last," Henry said as he walked through the door, after Stephen had tapped out the security code on the adjacent keypad. "I've only heard about Code Blue in a roundabout fashion, so it's great to finally meet the guys behind it."

"Indeed," said Caroline. "I believe, thanks to Henry, I've already been thoroughly introduced to Messieurs Douglas and Jeremy."

Jeremy nodded furiously, then stopped abruptly, perhaps aware of his overeagerness. Doug himself was reconsidering his earlier thoughts – she'd actually called him by _name_. Maybe she wasn't as bad as he'd contemplated?

Of course, she couldn't have known his preference, and was most likely being formal, but still…

"I, Henry, and two Aperture Occupational Observation Assistants will observe you for an hour, rotating every fifteen minutes or so to ensure reliable results," said Caroline, nodding to the two rather professional-looking men holding professional-looking briefcases, who had entered behind her. "There's no need to be worried or nervous – we are scientists, just like you, and as long as you know your stuff and aren't slack about it, everything'll be fine."

"Of course," continued Henry, "that's no reason to be slack with one of the AOOAs just because Ms. Gladys or myself have examined you – it _will_ be noted and considered in the final evaluation."

"But I'm sure you'll do fine," Caroline added, "so don't worry!"

He didn't know about anyone else, but to Doug the next hour was the worst he'd ever felt programming. No matter how much he tried to focus on _work_, Doug couldn't escape the feeling of two pinprick lasers boring into his skull, and it was all he could do to stop looking back at the observer every five minutes.

Therefore, it was with great relief that he heard Henry announce the hour was up.

"The AOOAs will handing out a short questionnaire," said Caroline, gesturing towards the men, who had pulled a stack of papers from their briefcases. "Please fill it out to the best of your ability."

One of the men slid Doug a small bundle of pages, secured together with a paperclip. He picked up a pen and started writing.

The first part was some rather basic coding questions, followed by a half-a-page essay on how he would track manhole covers in New York using a computerised system. It was probably just as a test of their skills, to make sure they didn't hire some idiot or something by mistake (which was odd, since they'd just finished examining said skills - perhaps it was a standardised form?) Doug made sure to emphasise his usage of C++ instead of FORTRAN – although, in his view, _anything_ would be better than the latter.

The second part featured open-ended questions about how he would 'rate' various aspects of Aperture on a scale of one to ten, with detailed responses 'encouraged'. He tried to keep as positive as he could, but even then, looking back over the sheet he had to admit there were quite a few fives, fours and threes.

The third section appeared to be some kind of personality survey. While most of the questions were related either directly to work or his thinking, were some odd questions ('If you were a tree, which tree would you be?'), some that seemed rather irrelevant ('Would you like to use a prism to study light?', and 'How often do you use a telescope to examine the heavens?'), and even one that he'd sure had been aimed directly at him for an incident that occurred early in his tenure ('Do you have feelings that people are talking about or watching you?')

But there was only one that really gave him pause.

_If you disappeared tomorrow, would anyone miss you?_

"The psychiatrics tell me it's related to depression or something," said Henry when Doug prompted him. "Apparently they want to keep a close eye on… well, 'high-risk' cases."

"Ah."

"It's not like Aperture would whisk you away in the night, after all!" he continued. "We'd get lawsuits! Even _if_ no-one 'cared', someone'd find out eventually, or maybe it'd leak. 'The truth will out', as they say."

After everyone handed in their questionnaires and had sat back in their chairs, Henry and Caroline stood up.

"Thank you for making this experience as smooth and painless as possible," said Caroline. "If you have any questions, we have enough time to take a few before going to the next group."

Stephen squinted his eyes for a moment. The gesture was one of those things Doug had picked up on years ago, and he knew well exactly what it meant, because it generally came before a certain kind of question.

"Excuse me if this is above my station," he said, "but I'm slightly curious as to why Mr. Staltworth here is accompanying you rather than, say, some executive or assistant or something. Isn't he the head of _another_ AI group or something?"

"Ah, well…"

"No problem," said Caroline. "I've hired him as my temporary assistant for the month while we carry this out. He expressed interest in doing this survey, and because of his results in the past with statistics, I trust him very much."

"But what about cross-contamination of knowledge for top-secret experiments?"

"We can isolate any specific details in his brain and remove them – however, I doubt fifty-or-so lines of code from four different consoles would be much use."

"Ah." Stephen's brow was still somewhat furled, and Doug could see why – it wasn't exactly a satisfactory answer to him either.

"Well, if there's nothing else," said Caroline, "we should be on our way to the next group. We expect to receive a printout of the relevant simulation's results by the end of the day."

She walked to the door, and then looked back, a sad smile on her face. "Goodbye, and keep on making the future a better place."

"Well, at least that's over," said Stephen as soon as the group had left.

Jeremy was holding his head in his hands, a bemoaned expression on those parts that were visible.

"What's wrong?"

"Oh, I failed, I _know_ – it's, it's just that I panic and I forget stuff? Like in the manhole question, I described using several separate arrays instead of an _array matrix_!"

"I'm fairly sure they won't fire you for-"

"Array matrix, I mean, how stupid do you have to be to forget _that!_ But there goes Jeremy, forgetting things all the time. Just a regular screw-up, as I'm sure you'll hear if you ask any-"

"_No-one thinks you're a screw-up,_" said Stephen. "And besides, that's not really a mistake you should worry about - it's such a small one, and the effects are the same. I mean, if you forgot 'bout ints and strings and tried to represent one as the other, _then_ I'd be worried!"

"Like those moronic Javascript developers," muttered Sammy.

Jeremy gave a rather timid laugh.

"I guess you're right," he said, although not quite sounding as if he meant it.

Doug had his own conundrum to think about. Their time with Caroline Gladys had brought more questions than it had answered. He still wasn't entirely sure of her motives, or whether she was genuinely caring or just really good at manipulating things. And that's not to say anything about Henry, who might as well be a secret agent for all he knew about him.

There was another thing bothering him. Some people - no-one Doug knew, but still - say that 'the eyes are the window to the soul'. Doug didn't know whether or not that was true, or even scientifically plausible – but in Caroline's, he sensed an ancient, sad gaze, even when she smiled - one that took in everything with a kind of longing, one that suggested that she would give anything to work alongside these men, instead of whatever-it-was CEOs did all day.

But there was something else – an anxiety, or some sort of dread. Was something going to happen?

_You're being paranoid_, he told himself. _She's probably meeting with someone from the government or something, and she's stressed out about that. Nothing's going to happen._


	4. The Turret Production Line

****Note: ****Due to circumstances beyond my control, I'm currently without internet (I'm posting this from a Internet café.) I'll try and reply to any reviews as fast as I can, but it may take a while. Thanks in advance!

**Author's note:** This chapter originally didn't exist, but when I'd finished the next chapter, the idea came to me and wouldn't leave me alone. So, here it is! There _is_ quite a bit of programming terminology in this chapter, and while I hope I've made everything as clear as possible, I'd like to apologise in advance if anyone's confused. Also, this chapter is quite a bit heavier on exposition than most chapters in this story - apologies if that's not your taste, but I felt it necessary in order to tell the story both in this chapter and chapters to come.

* * *

><p><strong><span>Smooth Jazz Fails<span>  
><strong>**Chapter 4: The Turret Production Line**

It was well known amongst the scientists that worked at Aperture that their biggest selling item was the Aperture Science Laser-Guided Sentry Turret. It seemed to just have the right combination of things – it was cute, it was deadly, and it was _very_ naive, saying things like '_er… are ya still there?_' when it had just deployed five-hundred bullets into the now-lifeless body of the person it was addressing. In fact, turrets had been so successful for so long that almost _everyone_ working at Aperture had worked in Turret Production at some point in time – indeed, it was seen as an initiation rite by some old-timers.

Amongst some scientists, especially in the fields of AI and robotics, turrets were also seen as the elephant in the room, so to speak – no matter how good a project was, no matter how groundbreaking it had been, it would never be as successful as the turrets. Some people talked of 'toppling the turret empire' in the same kinds of hushed tones as others would have talked about 'landing on the moon' fifty years previous. Most people saw anyone who even _considered_ their projects to have a fighting chance fiscally against the turrets as _at the very least_ half out of their mind.

There was a time when turrets hadn't been on top, of course – indeed, or so Doug had heard, turrets had been introduced by the then-new CEO Caroline Gladys to revitalise a dying Aperture, one that had a debt 'larger than most countries' and was bleeding money into 'useless projects' that 'sounded like the insane ramblings of a deranged mind'.

At least, that's how the person who'd been telling the story to him had described it. But then again, the man had looked like he was _at least_ fifty years old when he had told him the story five years ago, and the story itself, told over a rather drab lunch in the cafeteria, had been constantly punctuated with both an incessant cough and bouts of forgetfulness, so Doug didn't know how reliable he was. The man _did_ retire later on for 'physical and mental health-related reasons', after all. And on top of that, he had also described being forced to grind up _moon rocks_, of all things; when Doug had asked him what had been the biggest selling product for them at the time, he'd declared, with a completely straight face, 'shower curtains'.

Still, Doug was sure that, while the details might be a tad… _out there_, the general story was mostly accurate – Aperture had been dying, and turrets had saved them. And now, turrets were all the higher management cared about.

Doug himself had worked on the team programming the rather simplistic AI for turrets – if you could even call it AI – a good eight or so years ago. His time there had involved Improving the human recognition systems and clearing a few edge cases where the turrets didn't quite seem to, well, _work_ right (including an odd case that occurred when you held a banana in front of your face). But he'd left that all behind _years_ ago – because of the huge success of the turret line, the rules had been strict, the hours even _long_er, and the management _very_ demanding. Even his job _now_ was a heck of a lot better than it had been back then, even as his weary eyes had, every day, stared at the Black Mesa recruitment form that sat in his locker, even as he wondered whether or not maybe, _just_ maybe, things were better there.

It was then with some surprise that Stephen tapped him on the shoulder the Monday after the inspection and said, "Doug, you have an appointment with a turret."

"Er, what?"

"Just got a memo from one of the suits from Turret R&D. Says they need you down there pronto. Something about malfunctioning turrets."

Doug glanced to Sammy, but he only returned a look just as puzzled as Doug's.

"There's got to be some mistake. I haven't worked in turrets in _years_."

"No mistake, it seems. It's your name on the memo, and they specifically entered your code number." He smiled. "Don't worry, I know some of the young lads down in Turrets. They don't bite, although some of them have a rather… _odd_ sense of humour."

It wasn't the people Doug was really worried about, to be honest – they hadn't specified _how_ the turrets were malfunctioning, so he could be stepping into a death trap.

He briefly mused how ideal it would be of an opportunity to knock him off 'accidentally', but then his brain told him to stop thinking about useless conspiracy theories.

"Now, chop chop – the sooner you go, the sooner you'll be out of there. Good luck!"

Doug sighed – Stephen was right, of course.

And so, he crossed the room, entered the security pin to the door, and walked out, all the while silently cursing the bright spark of whoever had thought this was a good idea.

* * *

><p>It would be as he was just reaching the lift that he would meet that very man.<p>

"Er, excuse me! Hold the lift, would ya!"

Doug turned around to see a blonde-haired man sprinting down the hallway as if his life half-depended on it.

"Thanks mate, you don't know how much this means," he said. "I've been trying to wrangle up this guy that we need to help us with something and if he's gone down there by himself, I've got to get to him as fast as I can before he messe-"

It was at this point that the man looked up, stopped talking, and widened his eyes.

"Doug! I can't believe it! Long time, no see! I mean, I should have known it from the name, but-"

Doug stood in a state of slight shock. He had _no idea_ who this person was.

"-those were the days, weren't they? Remember when we blew up the science lab?"

Oh. He definitely remembered _that_.

"Er… Joseph?"

"Exactamundo, my friend!"

Joseph had been part of his college's robotics club. While the two had teamed up a few times for the local robot rumble competition, they hadn't otherwise interacted very much at all.

"When did you start working at Aperture?"

"Joseph, I've been here for around ten _years_."

"Really?" He seemed taken aback by that. "I've been the head of turret research and development for around three years; before that I was on the production lines, and before _that_ I was one of the assistants in Aperture's experimental product testing. That would have been… about five years ago."

"Anything interesting go on?"

"Oh, loads of stuff – all kinds of fascinating and horrible and _wonderful_ things! Nothing I can talk about, of course," he clarified when he noticed the look Doug was giving him. "And definitely nothing to do with the west wing, if that's what you're wondering – I'm about as interested as what's going on down there as I have to imagine you would be."

He swiped his card and entered his identification number, and with a lurch, the lift began to sink.

"I thought turrets were in the unsec building?" asked Doug. 'Unsec' stood for 'unsecure', and was a common nickname for the Aperture office building at the very top of the facility.

"Only production," replied Joseph. "Research and development is on the third level – always has been, you know. Don't want anyone stealing our future turret designs, after all."

"Uh…huh," said Doug. Somehow he doubted that turret designs were high on Black Mesa's priority list.

"If I heard correctly, they used to do the AI coding in the offices – management thought the unsec building was safe enough to protect the code, until there was a code breach in… '93 or '94?"

He glanced at Doug, as if expecting him to know the answer. Doug had to admit that this was the first time he'd heard of this – but then again, that would have been about the time he'd requested to be moved from turret AI to something else, and it was entirely possible he missed all this in the process of moving _himself_.

"It was a few years before I joined Aperture, at least. _Anyway_, they moved most of the AI programmers to Level 2 – but you'd know all about that – and the turret AI guys down here with the experimental equipment and design people."

"I see."

They stood in silence for a few minutes, watching piping for various things and whatnots go by, until finally the elevator shuddered to a stop.

"Welcome to Level Three: Aperture Science Laser-Guided Turret Research and Development – _nineteen eighty-seven_," announced the Announcer. "The date is the – _sixth_ – of – _September_ – in the year – _nineteen ninety-nine…_"

"Oh, you're probably wondering why I brought you down here," said Joseph somewhat loudly over the Announcer's speech. "It's my understanding you worked in turret AI at some point-"

"Yes, but it was a fair while ago," replied Doug.

"Yeah, given how long you've been here I can imagine you might be confused. You see, I thought it might be one of the interns we had a few months ago, you see, they were… _not_ the best we've ever had. I wasn't expecting-"

He hurriedly shook his head, as if to clear away the thought that was obviously just reaching his lips.

"_Anyway_, we've hit a slight snag, It seems that some of the new code is throwing an error condition, but we can't figure out _how_."

At that moment, the doors whooshed open.

"Ah, finally! What kind of elevator makes it mandatory to listen to the welcome message?"

"Our kind, it seems," said Doug dryly. Joseph grinned in response.  
>The two started walking down the entrance hallway.<p>

"Anyway, that's why we need _you_ here."

"Perhaps the bug's in the new code."

Doug hated to state the obvious, but Joseph had always been more of a… _mechanics_ guy rather than a programmer. It was, he supposed (not without a slight level of smugness) probably the reason he got into a management role.

"That's what we thought, but we went through _all_ the new code, and it seems all the functions are being called correctly and everything, at least according to the veteran coders. No funny business with the memory stack either. So we looked at the stack trace, and it turns out the exception's being called in one of _your_ functions – or at least, one of the ones you wrote, according to the changelogs."

The stack trace listed the hierarchy of running functions at the time – if one function ran another function, and that function ran _another_ one, then there would be three items in the stack trace, and they'd be ordered by what ran what. Therefore, unless the function _was_ being called incorrectly, there was no doubt about where the error was happening.

Doug sighed. He'd have to try a different tact.

"Surely you could get someone _else_ to fix it?"

Unless, of course, they were all incompetent. Doug dared not say it, but he had to admit the thought crossed his mind.

"_Well_… the problem with that is the function in question was rather poorly documented, and… well, we can't get the vets to do it unless we pay them overtime. One of them called it 'spaghetti code' – and that was just the nicest one."

That can't be _his_ code they were talking about, _surely_?

"Yeah, that's why I thought it was weird seeing _you_ in the elevator," continued Joseph, most likely reacting to his expression. "I'd thought, 'couldn't be him, must be someone else with the same name', because I remember your code was normally rather good."

Well, at least apart from that one incident in the science lab.

"So we figured – er, that is, my superior figured – we could bring 'that joker' – that is, you – down here and pay you normally instead to help rewrite the code, and since you're in the AI labs now, we – er, my superior – figured you've improved tremendously since then, because 'they don't just let any old nobody into the AI labs'."

They were passing a glass pane, on the other side of which was a small wall standing in the middle of nowhere, about five meters from a conveyer belt. When the pair had passed it, he saw that behind it was one of the testing mannequins, and it was absolutely _riddled_ with bullets.

"Yes, this is the turret testing track," said Joseph, stopping at the end of the corridor. "We've recreated the entire production line down here so we can be sure nothing messes up on the actual thing – the last thing we want is thousands of dollars worth of turrets ending up on the redemption track-"

_Redemption_ track?

"-or worse, being delivered to customers defective. Right now, we've stopped the entire thing because- well, you'll see."

They had arrived at a door in the same side of the wall as the glass pane. Doug gave Joseph a rather nervous glance, but Joseph simply smiled and proceeded to enter a PIN into the keypad lock.

"Don't worry, there won't be any turrets coming through – and besides, even if there were, the management platforms are all out of range of the turrets. We're not _completely_ stupid, you know."

"I didn't think-"

He stopped – he hated to admit it, but he _had_ been treating him somewhat unfairly.

"Er… well then, let's go, then."

Joseph nodded and, with that, stepped through the open door.

* * *

><p>As they drew further into the complex, Doug could swear he heard voices – two of them, in fact. One was repeating the same thing over and over again, while the other… well, didn't.<p>

And as they drew closer to the source of the noise, it became clear just who was speaking, and that it wasn't just in his head.

_"Template,_" said the Announcer.

_"Er, hi there, how are ya?"_ came the unmistakeable voice of a turret.

"_Response._"

"_Sorry, can't see a thing._"

_"Template._"

_"Er, hi there, how are ya?_"

"_Response._"

"_Do I get some, uh, eyes at some point?_"

"The voice synthesiser's samples were recorded by one of the engineers – way before my time here, though," Joseph noted. "He also configured all the voice messages. Apparently, he thought we should lull criminals into a false sense of security – you know, so their reaction times would increase. Not sure how effective they are myself – I'm sure someone in Statistics could tell you – but from what I've heard, security guards get a good laugh out of it, at the very least."

Doug narrowed his eyes slightly, but otherwise said nothing.

"As for the error messages – well, the story goes that he had quite a sense of humour."

At that point, Joseph rubbed his chin.

"Although, Stats _have_ requested we make the voice even… well, cutesier, at least. Apparently, they think they could get around 500 milliseconds or even a full second longer response time out of one with a higher pitch – not chipmunk pitch, mind you, though, more child-like. We've got someone recording in the soundproof room right now."

At this point, he glanced at Doug and noticed the look in his eyes.

"Oh, not to _kill_ anyone, _no!_ We're hoping if the person get a bullet or two in their leg or something, they'll think twice about infiltrating our client's bases and stuff – and you know, the guards'll pick them up, send them to hospital, and then formally charge them with trespassing and conspiracy to commit a crime and stuff. The turrets are meant as a _deterrent_, nothing more."

Doug briefly wondered if he really believed that, given their rapid rate of fire, and if he knew that one of the 'clients' was the United States Army.

"Well, anyway, here we are," said Joseph as they arrived at a large circular door that wouldn't look out of place in a spaceship airlock. "Before we go in, you _do_ notice that they're giving the wrong responses, correct?"

Doug listened to the responses for a bit before answering.

"Sounds like they're just defectives," he replied.

"Well, yeah, it does. But – well, you'll see when we enter."

He tapped out a PIN on the keypad and hit the Submit button. With the sound of whirling motors and rushing air, the door slid across the opening and out of sight. Beyond it was… another circular door.

"Clean room?" asked Doug.

"Nah, the chamberlock's for security," replied Joseph. "This one requires a different PIN."

Beyond the second door lay a room not much bigger than the chamberlock they had just left. A row of windows gave them a view into a _much_ larger room, through which the turret conveyer belt thread its way. On the belt were five turrets, and each were being scanned in turn by, well, some kind of scanner. Once the scanner had reached the end, it rewound back to the first turret and sat, presumably waiting further instruction.

Doug could see immediately what was wrong – instead of the bare, exposed innards the defectives would proudly display, the five turrets were completely formed – including their camera and laser sensor.

"Okay, see if that works."

In chairs and a table seated alongside the windows sat three men and two women, all in their early twenties, all huddled around a laptop. They were nervously looking between the laptop and the turrets, as if far more than a good recommendation depended on getting these turrets working. Another man stood in front of a large yellow control panel, holding a switch at the ready, while another was standing before a small compartment in the wall, inside which appeared to be another turret.

"It's finished uploading," one of them said. "Now, Jeff!"

The man named Jeff flipped the switch, and the conveyer belt whirled back into life.

"_Template." "Er, hi there, how are ya?" "Response." "So, we're all supposed to be blind, right?"_

"Hey guys, how's it going?" called Joseph out to them.

"Sorry, no luck so far, Mr. Aventine," one of them said. "We tried rewriting some of the last group's routines, but it's still cropping up."

"These are _this_ month's interns," Joseph said to Doug. "I told them to quickly take a look at what they could do until I'd returned with you."

He turned to the interns.

"Everyone, this is Doug Rattmann from Artificial Intelligence. He works on… er, what is it you work on?"

"Artificial intelligence," he replied.

"Ah, gotcha, top secret. But surely you could give _a bit_ more than that?"

Doug sighed. "You know I can't do that."

"Ah, okay then. Just know that he's very good at what he does, and he's here to help you guys rewrite the function he wrote when he was here in Turret R&D."

Joseph gave them all a cheerful smile, and then walked back to the chamberlock.

"Now, why don't you guys get acquainted, and I'll just leave you to it, because I have- well, prior arrangements. Toodles!"

And with that, the chamberlock closed.

"So."

Even at the best of times, Doug had never really been a conversationalist, and the awkward silence that surrounded them only served to highlight this fact. What was _worse_ was that the interns all looked expectantly at him, as if they wished for _him_ to start off.

"Uh, hi there. I'm Doug Rattmann, and uh- apparently I'm leading this group," he said somewhat nervously.

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Rattmann," said one of them, a redheaded male with short, spiky hair. "My name is Edward Sacrow, Bachelor of Science in Engineering."

"_Mister_ Rattmann… _honestly_, he's not a professor, he's a colleague!" scoffed a short-black-haired man. "Doug, I'm Rawen Evens, and I feel that my skills are enough that I don't _have_ to show off my certifications."  
>"Hmph!" said Edward, and he folded his arms. "Mr. Rattmann will need to know our talents to properly assess our respective assignmen-"<p>

"Just like men, aren't the lot of you – always waving your accomplishments around," muttered one of the females, a blonde with somewhat tan skin.

"Don't be rude," whispered the other, another redhead with rather pale skin.

"I'm not, it's not like he heard," she whispered back. "Besides, the men outnumber us two-to-one – if you want to survive, you have to know how to bite back."

She then walked up to Doug and shook his hand.

"Susan Turnbull, at your service. I wouldn't mind those two, they argue so much it's a wonder they haven't moved in together."

At this remark, Edward's face turned a rather deep shade of red.

"Anyway, to speed things along, this is Matthew Thomas" – a man somewhat shorter than the rest, neck-length brown hair rather obviously combed in a hurry, wiggled his fingers, – "my good friends, Jeffery Sinclair and Audrey Patrica" – the somewhat curly-haired lever puller and the redheaded woman waved – "and finally," she finished, pointing to a _very_ short-haired blonde man with large, thick-rimmed glasses perched on his freckle-splattered nose, "Joe Pondetta."

"Uh, nice to meet you all," said Doug. "Apologies if I don't get your names right – there are quite a bit of you, and we won't have much time to get properly acquainted."

"No problem, we're all grown-ups here," replied Susan. "Well, at least, _most_ of us."

If looks could create sharp implements out of thin air, the glare Edward was now giving Susan would have lodged at least twelve daggers and a broadsword at her head – probably just as well that wasn't the case then, Doug mused. He placed a mental note away to keep the two as far away from each-other as possible.

"Right, then," he said, rubbing his fingers together, "let's see this alleged code."

The small crowd parted to allow Doug to reach the computer. When he had, with a rapid combination of keystrokes and mouse swipes, Matthew brought up the file and scrolled down to the right position.

Doug scanned the function name. 'FIXFORALIGNISSUE' – that name rang alarm bells in his head.

He continued down the page, and as he did, his brow became more and more furrowed. The description of 'spaghetti code' had certainly been partially apt, if somewhat exaggerated – there were a fair few quick and dirty patchjobs present in the function. And Doug was fairly certain he knew why.

As he recalled, all those years ago, he'd been assigned this specific bug to fix by day's end – just after lunch, at that. He'd known it'd take at least a week to write it _properly_, but the floppies containing that version of the turret's firmware were scheduled to go out to press in two days, and upper management weren't prepared to delay that date or reassign people from elsewhere. So instead, he'd decided to write it quickly, so it would at least hold up for that version, and then rewrite it as time allowed.

But, as it turned out, time had not really _ever_ allowed – the tight schedule meant that Doug could never really work it in himself, and his manager only really seemed to care that it _worked_, not about how _well_ it worked. Eventually, he stopped bringing it up, and later, forgot about it entirely.

To be honest, he was surprised that it _hadn't_ been rewritten before now. He guessed that this was just the first time anyone had noticed – as his manager had felt at the time, why bother if it was working?

"Could you run the code with the debugger running?" Doug asked.

Matthew nodded, and tapped out a key command. A busy cursor appeared, and the status bar read that it was now compiling.

Unlike Code Blue (or indeed, most Aperture Science projects), Turret Manufacturing had a real-time debugger, which compiled and ran on the server, instead of a mainframe. This was because, as the reasoning went, turrets were so much less complex than a proper AI that they were able to run on a normal machine at only half-speed, whereas even Code Blue would take several _years_ to decide how to place one foot in front of the other, metaphorically speaking (although Turret's rather new computers certainly helped a lot.) And without Aperture's self-designed robotic chipset, a low power parallel-processing twenty-four core system-on-a-chip (designed for – what else – the turrets), Doug was fairly sure management wouldn't even be _considering_ most AI projects – all the utility in the world wouldn't make up for the fact that, without the mainframe, molasses could out-manoeuvre them.

The program indicated it was running the code for only a moment before it beeped, the code window leaping to the position it had stopped, and the intermediate section blaring an angry-red error message, reading '_Exception thrown: EX_INPUT_NOT_FOUND_OR_INVALID'_.

Doug's eyes bounced from line to line. He could see what the problem was – the code attempted to access the turret's visualisation array, but for some reason the array had _very_ little data in it The code manually checked if there was enough data to analyse it, and then, if not, threw the exception – which was, without the debugger, handled by the blind turret messages.

But why was there so little data in the first place?

Doug glanced at the stack trace, and an idea of what might have happened began to form.

"This function, ST_RUN – it's recent?"

Matthew shook his head. "It's been there for about a year, according to the changelogs. It's a self-test routine – it makes sure all the hardware is working _before_ continuing with the rest of the code."

"Oh, I remember Mr. Aventine talking about it," Rawen said. "Apparently there'd been some kind of mishap – something not being detected or something – and they decided to put it in for good measure."

"Some of them weren't distinguishing friendlies from unknowns because the camera was malfunctioning," recited Edward in a somewhat droll voice – apparently he'd regained his confidence somewhat. "It was picking up the moving object with the laser, but since the image it was receiving was corrupted, it decided _everything_ was an 'unknown'. They didn't pick it up until they'd shipped a few to customers – that was a rather embarrassing affair, so they _had_ to do something about it."

"Ah, thank you, Edward," replied Rawen, narrowing his eyes.

"Wasn't that the function we were just working on?" asked Audrey.

"Ah, yes," said Matthew, tapping his fingers on the tabletop. "The last group'd added a bunch of code to test the bullet loading and spring mechanism, and the motors for the flaps. They'd also rewritten a bit of the laser and camera self-test – that's what we were working through when you came in."

Of course – the interpreter would run at the same time as the self-test function. Previously, the self-test completed _before_ the interpreter finished initialising, but now the added code for the gun mechanisms had slowed the self-test down so that the interpreter started before the self-test was complete – thus, instead of data from the laser, the visualisation array contained a small bit of test data, explaining the so-called 'blindness'.

It'd be a simple fix to make his function wait until the self-test was finished. But Doug wanted to do better than that – he wanted to do the rewrite he had not been able to do before, and now was the perfect opportunity.

Doug explained what he wanted to do, and the interns all agreed that it'd probably be a good idea (although Edward grumbled something about '_more work_' under his breath). He then took control of the keyboard from Matthew, went through all the code and, as he did, inserted comments on what he remembered each section did.

Once he'd finished (a process that took about twenty minutes), they all migrated out of the other chamberlock and off to the workstation room. On the way, they passed a rather large grinding mechanism below several small chutes, beside which was a sign that read "Redemption Track Terminus" - probably an in-joke, Doug mused, as in his day it had merely been called the Recycling Track.

Once they arrived at the workstations, he assigned each of them a section of code to rewrite. He then passed between the consoles, making sure with a glance at the screens that their coding was satisfactory and clarifying bits of code when the occasional question emerged.

And as he did, Doug couldn't help but smiling to himself. This is how he'd manage a group of programmers, had he the chance – the _right_ way.

* * *

><p>"Hey, Mr. Aventine – we're done!" Jeffery said through the communication speaker that led to Joseph's office, almost four hours after they had started.<p>

"_Really?_" asked Joseph's voice on the other side.

"Yeah, the simulation runs it pretty much perfectly."

There was a slight pause before Joseph continued.

"_That took a bit longer than I expected._"

"Mr. Rattmann _really_ wanted to fix his function," Jeffery replied.

"_That sounds just like the Doug I remember – 'good enough' was never good enough for him_," Joseph replied. "_Alright, I'll meet you guys at the testing track._"

"Sure thing, Mr. Aventine!" said Jeffery, and he turned off the device.

When the gang had returned to the testing track observation room, Joseph was already there. He'd been examining the small glass room that contained the template turret – the current production model, used as a baseline for the experimental ones.

"Er, sir?" asked Susan.

"Ah, yes," said Joseph, turning to greet them. "Well, you know what to do."

Matthew got out the laptop, brought it out of sleep mode, and sent the compiled code to the collection of turrets sitting unsuspectingly on the conveyer belt.

"Alright, now, Jeffery!"

And with that, Jeffery threw the switch.

The conveyer belt scrolled back to the first turret, and the scanner's beam pulsed across its body.

"_Template_," said the Announcer.

_"Er, hi there, how are ya?_" replied the template.

"_Response_."

_"Er, hi there, how are ya?_" the first turret replied.

At that moment, the room exploded with noise – Matthew shouted "YES!" rather loudly, causing Susan and Rawen to block their ears; Jeffery was da-ing a little victory song to himself, dancing somewhat awkwardly as he did; and most everyone else (excepting Edward, Doug and Joseph) was cheering.

After the noise died down, and each of the turrets had been deemed acceptable by the scanner, Joseph clapped his hands together.

"Nice job, everyone! Alright, Doug, you're free to go – thanks for your assistance."

"No problem," said Doug.

The interns all said goodbye to Doug, with many of them expressing an interest in meeting him again. Doug nodded along, and when it was all finished, he waved them off, waited for Joseph to unlock the chamberlock, and took his leave down the corridor that lay beyond.

These kids were _far_ too young – far too young for Aperture. Unless they were _exceptional_, they'd get chewed up by the slow, scaly monster that was management and its stupid production values, and spat back out into the world as broken and defeated as the bones of knights against the dragons of old. They should have chosen somewhere else to start off their programming adventures – somewhere else to make sweet scientific music, somewhere else to compose software melodies of great majestic beauty.

And yet-

Doug shook his head. It was getting close to the time where he needed to take his second pill of the day. He'd retrieve that on the way back, and then he'd try and salvage whatever plans he'd had before all this happened.

He'd made it over the testing dummy, and was now walking along the corridor that passed along it. So wrapped in his thoughts he was that he didn't notice a door opening before him until it had almost whacked him in the face.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" said a rather familiar female voice – but Doug didn't connect it to a face until she had stepped out from behind the door.

"M-Ms. _Gladys_?" stammered Doug.

"Ah, Mr. Rattmann, we meet again!" Caroline said, smiling.

Of course – she _was_ inspecting Turret R&D today, wasn't she?

At that moment, the sound of a door bursting open, loud panting and rapid footsteps announced Joseph's entry into the hallway.

"Sorry, Ms. Gladys, I just remembered that you were – and I know this was supposed to be a secret – but-"

"It's quite alright," Caroline said. "I've been recording the new voice for the turrets, and we were just finishing the last sound bites. It's just something I wanted to do – to give back a little something to Aperture, to have a sort of endearing legacy. In case-"

She broke off suddenly, and started staring into the distance.

"Um… Ms. Gladys?"

She snapped from her contemplation and looked Doug in the eye.

"Do you want to hear them?"

Doug didn't quite know whether or not he _did_, so he merely nodded.

"Excellent! You'll be the first, apart from the sound engineers, Joseph, and myself, of course. I'm eager to know what you think."

And she led the way into the room she had just come out of.

"Alright, guys, run the vocal simulator!"

The room was empty, apart from a boom microphone; in the next room, visible through a window in the wall was a series of computers and some kind of sound board.

One of the people at a computer nodded and tapped out something on his keyboard.

"_Sighted,_" said the Announcer.

"_Hi. Hello. Target acquired. Hello, friend. There you are. I see you. Who's there? Preparing to dispense product._"

The voice that spoke sounded like a higher-pitched, heavily processed version of Caroline's own – much different from the husky male voice that had been used for the turrets as long as Doug could remember. It was, as Joseph had described, indeed almost child-like, and Doug could see how even the hardest soul would think twice about attacking it.

_"Lost,"_ continued the Announcer.

_"Are you still there? Target lost. Searching."_

"_Impact."_

_"Coming through! My fault! Sorry!"_

_"Bullet impact."_

_"Hey, it's me! Don't shoot!"_

_"Sleep."_

_"Sleep mode activated. Nap time."_

_"Disabled."_

_"I don't hate you. I don't blame you. Whyyy?"_

"That's all we have right now," Caroline explained. "The sound lab boys tell me they're still working on the best way to phrase some of the new voice files. We've decided to rewrite them, you see, to fit the character of the new voice synth."

She glanced at Doug expectantly.

"So, what do you think?"

"It's, uh, nice," he replied.

The voice _was_ certainly nice – cute and cuddly, and definitely something you _wouldn't_ want to kill – and even he could appreciate the irony. But he still felt that the whole thing was very… _wrong_. Tricking people into stumbling into the turret's fire, or delaying for long enough to shoot them – even if they were criminals, even if it were as Joseph had said and they only shot to injure, not to kill – it just felt wrong to him, like something someone with a very morbid mind would come up with.

"Glad that you like it!" Caroline didn't seem to have noticed the hesitation in Doug's voice. "Well, I must be off – Mr. Staltworth will probably be on my back about taking my time. I'll see you around, Mr. Rattmann, Mr. Aventine."

The two nodded.

"Oh, and Mr. Rattmann – if you need anything, or if anyone's giving you trouble, just let me know."

"Er, yes, Ms. Gladys?"

"And also, take this. You'll know what it means when you need it."

She held out a scrap of paper. Doug took it and glanced at it – it was a four-digit number.

He looked up at Caroline with a quizzical look, but she just smiled and exited through the door.

"What was that about?" asked Joseph.

"Your guess is as good as mine," Doug replied. "Well, take care."

"You too, Doug. I hope to see you around soon."

They shook hands, and Doug turned to exit the sound booth.

"One more thing," Joseph said. "Whatever you do, don't let the Management get you down. You're better than that."

"Huh?" Doug wasn't too sure what had prompted that.

"Just a sense I got," he replied.

Doug nodded and, after giving Joseph a small smile, left for the lift.

His time in Turret R&D had certainly not quite gone as he'd expected, and for that he was glad – and he'd been able to actually _fix_ something, and for that he was gladder.

It was a good thing, he mused as he walked, that nothing had gone wrong, either. Running from turrets was the furtherest thing on his list of things he'd rather be doing, and the best he could hope for was that he'd never be in that situation for as long as he lived.


	5. The Warning

****Note: ****Due to circumstances beyond my control, I'm currently without internet (I'm posting this from a Internet café.) I'll try and reply to any reviews as fast as I can, but it may take a while. Thanks in advance!

* * *

><p><strong><span>Smooth Jazz Fails<span>  
>Chapter 5: The Warning<strong>

The next week was about as uneventful as any Doug could hope for, and apart from talk of some broken bones caused by a extraordinarily slippery spill or leak of some kind somewhere in one of the corridors in the western end of the complex, very little talk of great significance reached Doug's ears. Sure, some people had been worrying about whether they would be axed, but far, _far_ less than he had expected – in fact, many seemed, if anything, _more_ confident than they had before. Perhaps they were a lot better at hiding their anxiety?

Most of those nights, Doug had slept well (or at least, as well as he normally did). But one particular night he'd gotten little sleep at all; indeed, most of that night had been spent staring at the ceiling in the vain hope that it would bore him to sleep.

Thus, it was with weary eyes and a humongous yawn that Doug exited the lift that morning. He feared that he'd fall asleep in the middle of the day, but he refused to let that stop him from doing his work. Besides, he had applied for overtime that day, and he'd be damned if a little tiredness got in the way of earning the extra money he needed. He'd live on caffeine if he had to, but he was determined to make it through the day.

"Hey, Doug!"

Doug stopped and turned around – Stephen was walking towards him, a flask in each hand.

"Morning chocolate?" he asked, holding one of the flasks out for Doug, when he'd caught up with him. Doug nodded and took it.

"So, what is Mr. Rattmann thinking about today?" Stephen asked as the pair started walking again.

"Not much, I-"

_They're hiding something._

Yet again, his mind returned to Caroline and Henry. Something nagged at him about the pair, something that his mind _just wouldn't let go_ – for no matter how hard he tried to forget the whole thing, all it was just well up again a few hours later. And the thing his mind told him was that they were up to something sinister.

It sounded crazy and paranoid. _He knew_ it sounded crazy and paranoid – that they were working together for some nefarious purposes. It was _ridiculous_, and if he told Stephen about it, chances are he'd just confirm how ridiculous it was.

And yet – there was some kind of melody to the chaotic ideas that clashed together. He felt as if all he needed to do is find the different instrument tracks, and an orchestra would form, performing beautiful music out of pieces that sounded terrible alone.

_But perhaps it's just noise, nothing more,_ he told himself, and decided that would be the end of that for now.

"Uh- just how much I dislike Management,"

"Tell me about it," said Stephen, grinning. "Oh, speaking of which, I saw Mr. Staltworth earlier today, on my way to the cafeteria. Fascinating man to talk to, if you can get a hold of him – I mean, he's hardly about these days. A shame, because his theories on-"

"_Ahem,_" interrupted Doug.

"Oh, right. He said that they were just finishing up the inspections today, and we should get our reports next week."

"I'm guessing Jeremy will be happy to hear that," said Doug. Jeremy had been noticeably more… _on edge_ than usual, ever since the inspection.

"That he will," Stephen replied. "What about you?"

"I'm not really worried," he replied. Reports were something Doug never really cared about, as long as his job was secure. Heck, he wasn't even sure he'd care if he lost his job at this point.

"Well, at least that's one of us."

He looked to the side, as if he were checking for eavesdroppers, and then turned back to Doug.

"Staltworth looked really nervous, too," he continued, eyes narrowing slightly. "A little jumpy, you know?"

That _was_ interesting.

"Perhaps he messed up something, and he's trying avoid Ms. Gladys?" Doug joked.

"Maybe," Stephen replied, rubbing his chin. "He'd need to-"

But Stephen stopped and stared at Doug for a moment. In return, Doug gave him a rather perplexed look.

"You look bushed," he finally replied. "You sure you're up to work today?"

"_Oh_," said Doug. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"It's just you don't _look_ fine," Steven said. "You know what happened to Jeremy a month ago-"

"I do, and it's not going to happen to me," said Doug. "I'm confident on that."

* * *

><p>"Alright, who broke the build?"<p>

Sammy had stood up from his chair and was now glaring at the rest of the team.

"What're-you-talkin'-about_?_" said Jeremy, a little too quickly. "Uh- because, you know, you should really be more specific, because, uh… you know, that's such a generic term that-"

'Breaking the build' was the term used for when someone submitted code to the database that did not compile. Only basic programming mistakes generally stopped the compiler from, well, compiling, so build breaks were _very_ rare – and usually a big deal.

"I tried compiling it to the simulator, but it came back with an error! Er…"

He consulted his screen.

"Who was on the Decision Module last?"

Sammy glared at Jeremy.

"What? I've been working on the Personality Matrix! Well, more like sorting out bugs, really – I mean, we do have a lot of them, and-"

"_I_ was," said Doug, "but I'm fairly sure it was fine when I last checked it in."

Sammy consulted his screen.

"Line 1947, _type mismatch_."

Doug backtracked to the line Sammy had mentioned. And when he saw what was there, his heart sank.

For reasons far beyond his comprehension, he'd indeed written the wrong kind of variable for the data he'd set it to.

"You _sure_ you haven't been using… _Javascript_?" asked Sammy, hovering over Doug as if he was a vulture waiting for him to die of embarrassment,

"No, I- _what_? No, it's just… I'm not sure what happened…"

"Mistakes happen to the best of us, even simple ones," said Stephen (although there was a mischievious glimmer dancing in his eyes, betraying the 'I told you so' that was otherwise left unsaid out of respect.) "And speaking of which, you _know_ the tradition."

The 'tradition' for breaking the build, in any team that Stephen led, was to keep a small plush dragon – or perhaps it was supposed to be a baby crocodile or dinosaur – beside the culprit's desk for the next week. The idea was that the rareness of breaking the build coupled with the sheer… well, _oddness_ of the punishment (if one could even call it that) would make it stick out in the recipient's mind, and thus prevent him from making that mistake again.

Sammy took the dragon from its usual spot (a cupboard in the corner of the room), and chucked it at Stephen, who gently balanced it beside Doug's screen.

Doug stared at it. The dragon itself was bipedal, purple with green spikes down its head and neck, and rather cartoonish. To say the least, it did not appeal to Doug very much (then again, he guessed that was the point). He felt that, between its two legged-ness, its oversized eyes, and its.. _odd_ colour scheme, it was far _too_ cutesy-cartoonish for his tastes – it reminded him a lot of those series of films about the adventures of six-year-old dinosaurs. He couldn't imagine Stephen buying this himself _at all_, even specifically for _this_ – he guessed it was a present from a niece, won in a children's raffle, or perhaps even a childhood toy.

Still, he supposed it was better than the multitude of other children's toys that it _could_ have been.

"Hey, take care of Spike, won't you?" said Sammy in a mock parental tone, smiling cheekily as he sat back down at his console. Doug rolled his eyes.

"That's quite enough," said Stephen, shooting a glare at Sammy. He turned to Doug.

"Ignore him, Doug. Correct the mistake and move on."

Doug nodded – he knew Sammy was rather… _outspoken_ about basic mistakes like this, and this gentle ribbing was part of his nature. It didn't mean he liked his comments any more – they _were_ called 'mistakes' for a reason.

* * *

><p>"C'mon, little clock, you can do it," whispered Jeremy, his eyes fixated on the clock on the wall opposite his workstation. "Change to six, it's only a few centimetres… just a little more…"<p>

It was early evening, and in Code Blue's workspace, anticipation for the end of the working day was high. Sammy was tapping the side of the keyboard incessantly, and Stephen was cleaning out his keyboard with a can of compressed air. If Doug planned on leaving anytime soon, he would have probably been anxious as well – but he had other plans tonight.

Finally, a beeping noise echoed around the room, followed by a message from the Announcer: "Unless you are part of the night shift, or are working overtime, the work day is now over. Thanks for your contributions to science, and take care – remember, you are our most valuable asset!"

No sooner had the notice sounded had Sammy bounded across the room as fast as his legs could carry him, tapped out the security code, threw open the door, and leapt through it to the world beyond. Jeremy quickly followed him – no doubt he had important places to be.

"Hey, you're not coming?" said Stephen as he stood at the door.

"Nah, I've applied to work overtime," replied Doug, which earned a stern look from Stephen.

"Are you _sure_ you can do it? Because if this is about earlier, you don't have to prov-"

"It's _not _- I applied for it yesterday."

Well, it _kind of_ was, if he had to tell the truth. While he _had_ applied for it the day before, after today's events he probably would have clocked in some overtime _anyway,_ just to get rid of the sinking feeling of failure in the pit of his stomach. And as far as he could see, there wasn't any better way of doing that than putting a few more hours into actually accomplishing something.

"Anyway, I'll be _fine_," he stressed. "I've got my mug, and my computer. What else do I need?"

"Lucidity," replied Stephen, a cheeky grin on his face. "Alright, if you say you're fine, I won't press it. But take care, and _please_, don't work yourself to death, okay?"

"Sure thing," said Doug. "See ya tomorrow, then."

"Yeah, see you," replied Stephen, and with that he left, closing the door behind him.

* * *

><p>The warmth of the sun kissed Doug's cheek, and he smiled.<p>

He was lazing in the sun on a deck chair, sitting in the middle of a large wheat field. He hardly got any time to enjoy the sun anymore, so he took any opportunity to soak up some sunshine as they came.

For around ten minutes he lay back in the chair, taking pleasure in feeling the sun against his skin. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine lying on a towel at a beach, the water lapping his toes-

It was as he was imagining this that something rather peculiar happened – a loud noise like a whip fired, and he fell to the ground.

Quickly, he spun around to examine the area, but his chair was nowhere to be seen.

He scratched his head – this _was_ odd, to say the least.

And then, something tickled his armpit.

And his legs. And his arms, and-

He glanced down, and saw a mass of ants crawling all over him. Nothing odd abo-

Wait, _ants_?

He stood up and tried to brush them all off, but more just replaced the ones he got. They were crawling across his neck, his face, his eyes-

A flash of light blinded him, and another whipping sound rang through the area; when he'd realised what had happened, he found himself meters above the ground, falling amongst a torrent of absolutely humongous ants.

Thousands more crawled across the forest of massive wheat stalks that he was falling inbetween, covering _every_ surface he could see with a swarm of withering black. He looked down – a large hole in the ground was directly below him, out of which the masses of giant black insects were teeming out of.

Doug closed his eyes and prepared for the worse – he didn't really fancy being ant chowder, but it that was the end, he didn't particularly want to see it happening either.

When he'd hit the ground (and hadn't felt any insects nomming on his insides), he opened his eyes.

He was in a large, black, empty chasm of some kind. The sound of rushing wind echoed through every part of the chamber, although Doug could feel no wind at all; below his feet, the ground felt hard as concrete. There were no ants in sight.

Doug stood up and examined the area. In most directions there was nothing to be seen but the black of darkness that permeated every corner of this… _wherever_ he was. There was only one thing he _could_ see, but it was rather far away.

He squinted. It appeared to be a ball on stilts – a shape similar to a rugby ball – with a single red laser attatched to it.

Doug moved forward to get a better look. And when he recognised what it was, he silently wished that the ants had eaten him.

An Aperture Science Laser-Guided Sentry Turret stood before him, its laser sight unwaveringly steady.

The turret wasn't firing, despite being in range – indeed, it wasn't doing anything at all. It stood alone, surrounded by the pitch black that was everywhere else, lit up by a single spotlight that, when Doug looked up, appeared to be coming from nowhere.

Doug stared at it, and it stared back. Something about it seemed to beckon to him, as if he was meant to walk up to it – but he knew all that would happen would him being shot to pieces. He didn't know why it wasn't shooting him already, but he didn't want to test his luck.

But then, the laser beam flickered, and Doug realised why it wasn't shooting – it was defective. Well, at least, so he _hoped_, That would certainly explain a lot – but even if it _appeared_ to be defective, he still didn't trust it one bit.

Hesitantly, he slowly walked towards the turret, prepared to run as fast as he could at the first sign of danger, but nothing seemed to happened.

And then, when he was around a foot from the turret, it spoke.

"_Hello, friend._"

Doug almost jumped out of his skin. He turned to run, but-

"_Wait, don't go!_"

That wasn't possible. That _was not possible_. Turrets had several preset voice prompts, and that wasn't one of them – either for the old _or_ for the new. He was imagining things. He _had to be_. He mustn't have taken his pills – yes, that _had_ to be it – and now he was hearing the voices again.

Doug shook his head – there were far more mundane answers. Perhaps he had misheard the turret? Perhaps its voice file had been corrupted?

And the turret was still not firing. If it _had_ been talking to him, perhaps it wouldn't hurt to humour it?

"Um, hi," he said.

For a few seconds the turret said nothing, and Doug started feeling decidedly silly for talking to a _turret_. He even considered walking away, while he still had the chance.

But then, almost as Doug had decided to leave, it began to speak – and speak it _did_.

"_I have a warning:_

_The pieces are set, the King in peril_

_The board will be washed, pure and sterile_

_Eight pieces will seal the rest inside_

_Seven are doomed, and six will die_

_The Queen has been born, the Rook is near_

_The Bishop should say, should whisper his prayers_

_He shall live, but never the same_

_His path will meander and his purpose will maim_

_The Knights will try, but they won't succeed_

_Great anger and sorrow is all they'll seed_

_They'll toil and work but it will be for naught_

_What time they have will run them short_

_And the Rook shall live forever more_

_But his fate shall be the worst of all."_

It paused briefly before delivering the last two lines:

_"So least forever inside you stay_

_Act now or everyone, with breath, shall pay."_

Doug's first reaction was utter confusion. A corrupted voice file could easily explain a word or two out of place. But this turret had just spouted entire _verse_ at him! He _had_ to be delusional – and once he found his way out of this… _wherever he was_, he was going to _make sure_ he took his pills – _as soon as possible_.

And what on Earth was it (or his mind, as the case was) talking about anyway? He ran it over in his head again, and again, and once more, but no matter how many times he thought about it, all that it sounded to him was random chess analogy.

Consulting his conscious self wasn't working. As crazy as it sounded, he decided to ask his delusion – if it _was_ a corporation of his subconscious, perhaps it could give him answers he couldn't think of himself. It couldn't hurt, at the very least – well, unless he provoked it in some way, he guessed.

"Er, excuse me, turret?"

The turret said nothing.

"I was wondering if you could explain what your poem meant?"

This time, the turret did say something – but not what Doug wanted to hear:

"_Nap time._"

And the turret's laser switched off.

"NO!" He didn't think – one moment he was standing a foot away from the turret, the next moment, he had grabbed the turret and was shaking it up and down. "Tell me what you _mean!_ What should I _do?_"

An intense feeling had swelled inside him – as if he knew this turret would answer not just the riddle, but _everything_ that had been happening.

But the turret remained off.

"_PLEASE! _I'm _begging_ you! I _need_ to make sense of this!"

He dropped the turret and fell to his knees.

"_Please._"

Doug stared at the turret, pleading in his eyes, but the turret did not respond.

After a few minutes of this, the idea that he was being absolutely _silly_ flickered through his mind, and he stood back up, with the intent of finding away out of this crazy place.

The next thing he knew, the world fell away.

His first instinct was to yell.

But his calmer side prevailed, and when he gathered his bearings, he saw that he and the turret were being hurled through the air by a strong wind around a by a vortex, centred on – oddly enough – the spotlight.

He looked down – the patch of light on the ground was shrinking at a rapid speed, until it seemed to be as small as a pin. Perhaps this vortex was taking him back to the garden of giant wheat?

The tunnel of wind began to spin faster and faster, and Doug felt himself beginning to drop. In fact, the faster he went, the faster he and the turret fell; a few seconds was all it took to accelerate to a speed that he felt there was no way – absolutely none – that he'd survive impact with the ground.

Faster and faster and faster-

Doug decided to grab a hold of the turret – if he were to die, he wanted to be close to something he knew. And besides, in these last few seconds, he desperately wanted companionship, and, well, this turret was the closest he had.

Around and around and around…

"_One more thing-_"

The turret was awake again, and to be honest Doug didn't know whether to feel relieved or furious.

"_Remember: don't make lemonade. She'll be tame if you don't._"

Oh great, just as cryptic as everything else.

It didn't really matter, Doug supposed. In a few seconds, the both of them would be smooshed against the ground. Nether-the-less, he held it tighter, as if somehow, deep inside, he thought it could save him.

"_Remember that…_"

The spotlit area loomed large below them, and they were mere meters above the ground…

"_Goodbye_."

Doug closed his eyes and braced himself for what was about to come.

* * *

><p><em>Screaming… A woman was screaming, long and loud… it echoed, it coursed through every chamber, through every fibre of his being. He needed to help her, rescue her, save her…<em>

* * *

><p>To his great surprise, he did not hit the ground.<p>

In fact, it was so much of a surprise that Doug lurched forward (as he didn't count on being upright) and fell back-flat on the floor, his seat toppling with him. Why it did so became apparent as soon as his brain caught up with what was happening – he'd been hugging the back of his chair as if his life depended on it.

He pushed the chair off him, got to his feet, and rubbed his head.

And then he remembered the scream.

It had seemed so _real_ – especially in contrast with the dream that had preceded it. He still had the urge to help that poor woman, wherever she was-

But it'd be _impossible_ for it to have been real. The room was soundproofed, and he was the only one in it. It was part of the dream, it _had_ to have been.

And what about the dream itself? He'd had weird dreams, to be sure, and the last time he'd been off his medication, the conspiracy theory he cooked up would rival almost _anything_ for weird. (It involved aliens and Big Foot working together to topple the Kremlin and put in its place a giant spaghetti monster.) But after all of his dreams, he'd woken up with a sense of incredulousness or unbelievabitlity, coupled with a sort of hazy feeling when trying to recall it. What worried Doug about this one is that, both now and in the dream, his head had felt clearer than it had in quite a while.

He tried to recount the vision he'd seen, to see if it would make any more sense now that he was awake, but the more he tried to hold on to the sands of details, the faster they slipped through his mind's grasp. There were – there was a turret that spoke in riddles… and he'd been shaking it to get answers from it and… a tornado had carried them away and… giant ants?  
>And… a warning. Perhaps it'd been his mind trying to work through the puzzle of this place. Perhaps his subconscious had noticed something he hadn't, and was trying to bring it to his attention?<p>

He yawned. He was overreacting. Why should he worry about his dreams? They were _just_ dreams, after all.

He glanced at the clock on the table, and the time – "02:30" – glared back at him. It was late – _very_ late.

He scanned the console to see what he'd managed to do before falling asleep. He had hardly gotten any work done, which meant it'd be very unlikely that he'd get paid for the overtime. There was nothing else to it - he'd finish the routine, head off home, and finish the overtime tomorrow.

He quickly typed in the end of the function he'd been working on, and added some to-do comments that he'd replace with actual code later, and then shut down the computer and walked to the door.

But before flipping the light switch, he glanced at the dragon ('Spike', as Sammy had named it.) And he decided, between the riddle-me-this turret and giant ants, maybe it wasn't such a bad soft toy after all.


	6. Blue As The Sky

**Author's note:** Hey guys, I'm back on teh Interwebs! :)

Recently I was PM'd by another writer who had been accused by an anonymous reviewer of stealing their fanfic's title from mine. And while I appreciate the support and loyalty, I got the title of this fic from a Rat Man graffiti - the same one they had gotten it from. I don't 'own' the phrase 'Smooth Jazz Fails', and even if it was original to me I wouldn't really mind.

I just want to take this opportunity to ask that if you think someone's copied from someone else, please try and sort it out in PMs first (PM both the original author and the one you think copied something) instead of posting the accusation in a public review. Civility is one of the most important things we have, and I'd hate to lose it over a title.

Finally, it's my pleasure to recommend the other Smooth Jazz Fails by MasterPassionCreed - it's a well written drabble with a very nice theme.

* * *

><p><strong><span>Smooth Jazz Fails<span>  
><strong>**Chapter 6: Blue As The Sky**

Hunched over his hands, and layered in about three or four layers of jumper beneath his labcoat, Doug slowly made his way through the wheat field and towards the shack that lay within. A cold chill had descended over the area, and the icy-cold droplets of water, formally clinging to stalks of wheat and now pressing themselves into Doug's pants and dripping into his shoes, did not make matters better at all.

The county, and indeed much of the north-western United States, was now fully ensnared in autumn's harsh grip; in only a few weeks it would give way to winter's frost and, further on, snow and ice. Doug was certainly glad that he wouldn't be walking through _that_ – winter vacation, for which he'd applied for, would start in late November, and then he'd have a month and a half to himself and a mug of hot chocolate.

_Just a few more meters_, he thought to himself as another cold chill went up his spine.

As the last stalks of wheat bent, Doug's eyes met the welcome sight of the run-down shack; he ran to it as fast as his heavily-padded legs could carry him. He swiped his card, tapped out his passcode rather furiously, and impatiently tapped his foot as he waited for it to be confirmed.

"_Incorrect password,_" the speaker finally said, and Doug groaned. Of all the days to mistype!

He carefully tapped it out again, making sure he didn't accidentally press multiple keys at once or hit an adjacent key or something like that, and then hit the submit key again. Thankfully, the system accepted it this time, and Doug thusly proceeded to press his palmprint against the scanner and enter the lift.

"Welcome to Aperture Science, loyal employee _[INSERT SUBJECT HERE]! _Please keep your hands, feet, head, or other appendages inside the elevator while it is in motion."

Doug rolled his eyes. He wasn't in the mood for the Announcer's broken faux cheeriness.

As the elevator descended, he busied himself with watching the various pipes rush by – although the elevator itself was surrounded by a glass bubble, the shaft beyond was unshielded, exposing bare some of the innards of Aperture Science for all to see. Some pipes were massive, made from steel rusted with age; some were transparent, ferrying turrets and other things to where they needed to be in the facility. One such pipe held a free-flowing stream of large cubes, each with triangular braces on the sides – Doug had been told that these were 'storage cubes', although quite what they stored he did not know.

"Aperture would like to remind you," wound the voice of the Announcer through his thoughts, "that you are all welcomed to our Christmas celebration! With your help, we can help make it even better than last time, and we can trim the number of injuries this year to below ten."

Doug had never been to the company Christmas celebration, or indeed to _any_ company Christmas celebration, but even he suspected that ten was a rather high number of injuries to have at such a party. Only at Aperture, he supposed.

"The date is the – _twelfth_ – of – _September_ – in the year – _nineteen ninety nine_," the Announcer announced, each pause between variables making the whole sentence sound increasingly stilted. Doug might have pondered about the reasons for this stiffness of phrase – perhaps the incredibly early version of the speech pre-compiler couldn't handle integrating variables into the overall phrase very well – but the level of warmth in the lift wasn't much better than the outside, and he wanted to get to the relative warmth of his level as fast as he could so he could strip at least two of his jumpers off. Besides the temperature, they did tend to make it rather laborious to move very much at all.

Finally, the doors opened, and Doug lumbered out to the hallway beyond.

He couldn't say for sure it was much better – now, instead of being cold in spite of his layers, the layers themselves made him uncomfortably warm. He quickened his pace, eager to reach the employee storeroom as soon as he was physically capable of without stumbling.

Flinging off his labcoat and hanging it from the locker, he pulled off layer upon layer of jumper and trackpants until he felt comfortable with the temperature; he then picked up the clothing he'd scattered on the floor, stuffed them in his locker and put his labcoat back on.

A jumble of cotton and colour, all threaded and knotted together in what appeared to be random chaos, but together forming an organism of perfect sense, a solid object that anyone would tell you was the least chaotic thing at all. Sometimes, Doug wondered if Aperture was like that – many chaotic cogs, clashing and screeching together, but somehow working to create a most sensible place – a place of madness forming a place of _science_.

He reached for his jar, now only three-fifths full, and shook from the cacophony of colour two capsules, his open palm waiting patiently to capture them as they fell. Briefly, he watched them twirl through the air, the beauty of their gyrations and how their graceful chaotic paths created a single steady path striking him in a most peculiar way.

They bounced on his palm – once, twice, three times – before coming to a complete halt; he jerked from the trance and shook his head. He needed to focus.

Down went the pills, and down poured the water, his throat pulsing as he swallowed each segment. Inside, a relaxing cool permeated through his chest, as if the water itself was calming his fears and worries, and taking them away.

He placed the jar of pills back in its place, snugly among the jumpers, and closed the door. He was just about to turn to leave when he heard the door open.

"Oh, Doug, good to see you!"

It was Terrance, his former project manager. Usually he had a very serious look on his face, but today he was wearing a very uncharacteristic smile. To be honest, it unnerved Doug somewhat.

"What's the good news?" he asked.

"Oh, it's nothing, just that I'm now _Caroline Gladys's personal assistant!_ Who'da thunk that I'd get it in the end?"

"To tell the truth, sir, I didn't even know there was an applicat-"

"Oh, I'll finally get to work on some personal projects of mine! I can see it now…"

Terrance trailed off, his eyes staring right past Doug into whatever dreams of invention he was happening.

"Er, sir?" Doug prompted.

"Huh? Oh, yes, right." He adopted a serious look and tone. "This'll mean that any requests or contact made to Ms. Gladys now have to come through me." He glanced at the lockers. "Personally, I'm just collecting my stuff and moving it to the unsec building, I won't be staying long and you won't see me around very much."

Doug nodded, very unsure of how to take all this. "Uh… good luck, sir."

"Thanks, Doug," replied Terrance.

And before Doug quite knew what was happening, he'd drawn him into a rather big bear hug.

"Oh, I'm going to miss all you guys," he said over Doug's shoulder. "And I'm going to miss all the things that go down in here, too – but most of all, it's the people I'll miss."

"Uh, sir? Are you all right?" Perhaps he'd accidentally drunken some experimental formula or something.

"Oh? Oh, right." Terrance let go of him (and Doug was quite thankful of that – his sides were beginning to hurt.) "Just an old fogey getting all emotional. Never mind me."

He opened his locker and got out a large cardboard box filled to almost brimming with folder upon folder.

"Well, this is it. Good bye, Doug, and good luck."

He held out his hand, and Doug shook it.

"Good luck to you too, sir," Doug repeated.

Terrance smiled, took one last look around the employee's storeroom, and sighed. And then he turned, sighed again, and began to stride friskily down the hallway and out of sight.

Doug stared after him, unable to move - his mind was still trying to process exactly what had just transpired, and it wasn't doing a very good job at it at all.

Gradually, the gears in his brain began to force themselves into action once more, and he started to mull the whole thing over. So, Terrance was Ms. Gladys's new personal assistant. Not only that, but all communication would have to go through him, and he'd have greater administratoral power in the organisation.

Was it a plot to wrest control for Aperture away? Orders and reports could be manipulated, and Terrance would be in the perfect position to do so.

_Or_, a voice in Doug's ear said, _a man who just wants to do paperwork all his life just got the biggest paperwork job in the entire company, and he's absolutely over the moon about it._

His mind was right. Terrance had never quite meshed well with the scientists, and now he had a job where he didn't have to. Perfect for him, and perfect for Aperture.

* * *

><p>"Hey, Doug," greeted Stephen as Doug walked through the door.<p>

"Morning Stephen," Doug replied as he sat down at his terminal. "Nice weather we're having."

Stephen smiled. Doug noticed that below his lab coat was also a woollen jumper, his blue with one horizontal yellow stripe along the middle.

"Glad I'm not the only one feeling the cold," he said as he stood from his lean against his own desk. "Me and Jeremy just arrived – and goodness knows how long Sammy's been here."

"I arrived at five-thirty," Sammy replied curtly, as if Stephen was questioning his very honour, rather than just the unusualness of the time he chose to come to work.

"I'm only just waking _up_ by five-thirty – well, I guess it's more like six, six-twenty – around that time," said Jeremy, who had swivelled around in his work chair and was now listing things on his fingers. "And then it's a bit of breakfast – you know, some eggs, a bowl of cereal – nothing too sugary, mind – maybe a banana-"

"Duly noted, Jeremy" said Stephen. "Now, we should probably get to work – after all, a good start leads to a good end."

Doug nodded, eager to get into the day's work. The other day he'd been assigned a bug in the Context module. It had initially seemed to be an easy fix, but he'd soon found that it was harder than he'd thought, and was almost ready to shelve it when, the previous night, he'd thought of the perfect solution.

It had only been perhaps a little longer than an hour of working on this function when something caught the corner of his eye – a large shaded area of some kind, just inside his peripheral vision. Temporarily distracted, he glanced to the area he had seen, and saw it to be part of a sketch in a paper pad that had been hastily slid between his and Jeremy's computers.

The sketch was of what looked like a metal-plated ball with handlebars and a large hole in the center. Further inspection of both the diagram and the notes beside it revealed the 'hole' as being a camera behind a large glass screen, with light-emitting diodes mounted to the camera and arranged in what _looked _like some kind of stylised iris.

"Hey, Jeremy, what's this?" Doug asked, pointing at the inscription.

"Huh?" Jeremy turned away from his screen to face Doug. "Oh, that's just my sketchbook. Nothing special in there, just terrible artwork, really-"

"What's this… device, specifically?"

"Oh, that?" He followed Doug's finger. "That's-"

But when he saw exactly what was on the page, he jolted.

"Uh- nothing!" He grabbed the book from the table. "Uh, that is, nothing, well, really worth your interest, just silly old Jeremy with some bad artwork, as I said before, never mind me-"

"It looked fine to me," said Doug. "Come on, what is it?"

"Uh, really?" Jeremy gave Doug a dubious look. "I-it's just some designs – well, I had some free time, you see, and my background was in Engineering – and I was thinking – well, contemplating, really – about how I'd design an AI robot."

"You designed some hardware for Code Blue?" Stephen asked, rolling his chair across the room. "Well, come on, give us a look!"

"It's really nothing special," he narrated, flipping through three or four pages of design. "This is the outside diagram – the left is front view, the right is side – and here's the internal mechanisms. This is the, uh, what I call the 'eyelid motor' – it manipulates the optic cover – and the 'iris motor' – it extends and retracts the virtual iris to facilitate a greater range of emotion."

"Is that an Aperture 5-Watt Synegising Transfer Port?" Stephen asked as he flipped to the last one, a detail diagram of a series of ports in the rear of the device.

"Yes – it's designed to plug into support rails, auxiliary ports and the like," replied Jeremy. "You know, if they ever finalise it. Not that I'm suggesting that they're doing a bad job," he added sheepishly. "I mean, I wouldn't have a clue – I'm not part of their team, obviously, so I don't have any schedule or anything – it's just that they _are_ taking quite a bit of time to-"

"How does it get around?" asked Sammy.

"T-that's a very good question!" Jeremy replied. "To which, I'm not sure of an answer – I wanted to make it as convertible for multiple purposes as possible, and legs kind of hurts that purpose. I mean, it could be used for sea or space travel, and you don't need legs _there_."

"Well, it can hardly roll along the floor – the software has enough trouble with frame of references as it is," Sammy replied.

Stephen rubbed his chin. "I think one could make a pair of legs 'add-ons', so to speak, using the Transfer Port. That'd solve that problem easily enough."

He turned to Jeremy. "Look, I think this design could go somewhere. I want you to clean this up and submit it to the Aperture Science Experimental Hardware Facility. If they choose it, then that's one thing you can impress any future bosses with on your resumé; if they don't, then no harm no foul. They're probably cooking up something of their own, so the least you can say is that you tried."

He got up and placed his hand on Jeremy's shoulder. "In future, don't be afraid to share things like that. We need all the help we can get, and if the worst comes to the worst, nothing will change. You _need_ to be more assertive, otherwise you'll be my age and see all your ideas realised by other bright sparks with similar minds, just because you thought it wouldn't fly."

"Um, thanks. Thanks very much."

Stephen smiled at Jeremy, and then turned back towards his computer. He pushed his seat back into place, sat back down, and got back to typing.

"Er, one more thing," said Jeremy. "I still haven't thought of a colour for the iris – you know, to give it some personality and all."

"Well, there _is_ the obvious choice," replied Stephen, still typing away. "But if you want some suggestions, I suggest posting a message to the company newsgroup."

"Uh…"

Jeremy widened his eyes and bit his lip – apparently. the idea of sending a cross-company message did not appeal to him very much at all.

"If it helps, I'll do it," volunteered Doug. "I'll tell you if I receive any suggestions."

Jeremy nodded feverishly, a smile returning to his face. "Thanks, Mr. Rattm- uh, I mean, Doug."

"It's no problem at all," Doug replied.

* * *

><p>It was late in the afternoon, and Doug could feel the atmosphere begin to wind down and his mind begin to loose focus more and more as the end of the day got closer. He thereby decided to take the opportunity to check the newsgroup for some answers.<p>

The question (purposely written as vague as possible in that it only mentioned a 'good accent colour for a black screen') by now had around fifteen replies. Some had suggested gold, green, red and purple – there was even one that offered a burnt orange colour.

But near the end of the thread lay one comment that rather stood out to Doug.

* * *

><p><strong>"Hey there! Your project is Code Blue, isn't it? :p<strong>

** Seriously, blue stands for hope, happiness and for the future – mainly through its association with the colour of the atmosphere. So my recommendation is to choose a nice blue as your accent colour.**

** But not just any blue – make it blue as the sky.**

** Cheers and good luck! Yours, C."**

* * *

><p>Doug glanced at the header – and what he saw made him start so much he almost fell out of his chair. The email address that had sent it was labelled <em>cgladys-at-aperturescience-dot-com<em>.

"Well, I guess that settles it," said Stephen over his shoulder. "When the CEO of Aperture Science suggests something, you could hardly say 'no'."

Turning around, he tapped Jeremy on the shoulder, who had been engrossed in attempting to challenge the clock into moving faster again.

"Huh-what-I wasn't doing anything-I mean, I was working!"

"Calm down, Jeremy, it's just me" Stephen said, smiling a little smile. "Good news - your machine's optic now has a blue iris."

Jeremy blinked. "Ah, that's good – blue is a nice colour. Well. I mean, all of the other colours are nice too, but blue is the nicest of all, or at least I think so."

He nervously glanced at the screen. "Who suggested it, if I might ask?"

"Oh, it was no-one, really," replied Stephen. "Only a woman by the name of _Caroline Gladys!_"

"Wow!" Jeremy grinned a humongous grin. "M-Ms. Gladys really suggested a colour for _my_ design?"

"But not just any blue. You've got to make it 'as blue as the sky'."

If Jeremy's eyes were flashlights they would have probably outshone the sun at this very moment, so bright and excited they appeared. "I-I-I can't believe it! This is _fantastic_! Sure, she probably hardly knows me, but… _wow_."

He looked to Stephen, who was returning his smile with one of his own. "I'll have that design to you on Thursday. I promise."

He twirled around in his chair, letting out a whimsical '_weee!_' as he did. And Doug reflected on the fact that, in the entire year he'd known Jeremy, he'd never seen him _quite_ that happy.


	7. The Amber Behemoth

**Smooth Jazz Fails  
>Chapter 7: The Amber Behemoth<strong>

"The date is the –_fifteenth_ – of – _November _– in the year – _nineteen-ninety nine_ – and the time is – _eight-fifteen a.m._," the Announcer observed, as Doug waited patiently for the doors to open. "When you exit the lift, please proceed to your designated working environment."

It had been almost two months since Jeremy had presented his designs for the hardware side of Code Blue. Since then, they had made very good progress – they already had a working prototype, although at this point it was merely a bunch of circuit boards wired together to some ball-bearing motors and supported by the frame of an old globe they had found in the cupboard. But still, everything worked well enough for the purposes of testing, which was, of course, the purpose of prototypes, after all.

Doug exited the elevator and, as he usually did, walked towards the small room set aside for Code Blue. But that was before he saw Stephen walking towards him, a rather stern look on his face.

"We've been reassigned," he said as soon as he was in Doug's earshot, his irritation very clear in his voice. "Some suit by the name of Terrance Michican is looking for you, apparently he's got separate marching orders for you."

"W-_what_?"

Doug's brain cogs felt as if they'd been jammed by a stick. _Reassigned?_ Code Blue had been coming along _very_ well – how could they reassign them, just when they'd been working out most of the kinks? There _had_ to be some mistake.

"Wh-where've you been sent to?" he managed to stumble out.

"Top-secret project by the name of – get this – _Code Amber_. If Management thinks their mickey-mousing about will-"

"_Staltworth_," Doug muttered.

"What was that?"

"Code Amber is Staltworth's project!" he exclaimed. "I overheard him talking about it with Terry – er, Mr. Michican – a couple of months ago!"

"Hmm, that _is _interesting," Stephen replied. "If I were slightly crazier, I'd propose that Management was really headhunting in that inspection of theirs."

"It's not something I wouldn't put past them," Doug agreed. "If they-"

"Uh, love to keep this conversation going," interrupted Stephen, "but here comes Michican now. I'm supposed to be in the west wing right now – catch you later!"

And with that, he rather hastily pushed past a group of interns and disappeared.

"Ah, Doug!" shouted the voice of Terrance behind him. "Glad I caught you before you walked all the way to your old working space – you wouldn't want to walk all the way back, I'd imagine."

Wait, were they _firing_ him?

He composed his face in a form that he thought was suitably not-angry, and turned to face him.

"Hello, Terrance," he said in a tone that was slightly more icy than intended.

"You've been a great assert to Aperture in the years I've known you," Terrance continued as If he hadn't noticed. "And hopefully, for many years more – but we've examined your exceptional work and feel that you would be better off in – nay, _deserve_ – a better place in our company."

He pulled out a slip of paper and handed it to Doug.

"That is why we've decided to reassign you to Code Amber. We feel that your talent would be of better use there, and you'd be more suitably challenged by the problems faced there. You'll be expected to start work there _immediately_."

Doug slanted his eyebrows inwards.

"What _is_ Code Amber?"

"I'm not authorised to talk about it here," said Terrance. "But your project lead will be happy to tell you about it, I'm sure."

"What happens to Code Blue?"

"Don't worry, Code Blue is in good hands with Messiers Jeremy and Samuel," Terrance replied. "And we'll be reassigning others to pick up the slack."

Doug hesitated a bit before asking the next question – he wasn't quite sure how well it would go over with him.

"Can I, uh, appeal this reassignment?"

"Of course!" said Terrance. "But once you see the… _unique_ challenges presented, I feel certain you won't want to."

He smiled, and left in the direction of the lift.

Well, there was really nothing else to it – he began walking the route marked out on the slip of paper. At least he'd finally find out what Code Amber _was_.

Although, it wasn't without some trepidation – what had Terrance meant by 'unique'? And was this a trap?

_Not that again_, he thought to himself. _There's no conspiracy here._

* * *

><p>When he arrived at the door of the office he'd been assigned to, he found that Stephen was waiting outside, along with a black-haired Caucasian female and a bald African American man.<p>

"Hey, Doug," said Stephen when he saw him. "Know anyone?"

"Uh, no, I-" Doug began, but when the woman turned at the sound of his voice, he recognised her immediately.

"Ah, _Doug_, good to see a familiar face!" the similarly familiar voice of Susan Turnbull said. "I dyed my hair, you like?"

Stephen raised an eyebrow.

"She was one of the interns in Turrets," he explained.

"Yep, and I decided to join full time! You lab boys need some competition after all, right?"

To emphasise this, she punched an imaginary punching bag – "ha, ha!"

Stephen could not keep a bemused look off of his face.

"Ah, quite the lively one," he whispered to Doug. Doug rolled his eyes in response.

Over the next few minutes, the group introduced themselves to each other. The other man was Caleb Vaughan, a transfer from another project that involved robotic cats and 'genetic transmorgification', whatever that was. Whatever it involved, he seemed rather nervous about it, as if he'd rather not talk of it again.

Doug was about to enquire further when the clunking of the door release caught his attention; from behind it shuffled none other than Henry Staltworth.

"Ah, welcome all to the newly formed Amber group!" Henry said. "For those who don't know, I'm Henry Staltworth."

'Newly formed'? Doug briefly allowed himself to wonder what exactly happened to the old group.

"Aren't you Ms. Gladys's assistant?" asked Caleb.

"Er…"

He scratched his head a bit, and wrinkled the skin above his eyes in concentration.

"I'm… not really sure what you're talking about. Mr. Michican is Ms. Gladys's assistant."

The man named Caleb opened his mouth as if to say something, but then closed it again, evidently deciding against it.

"Anyway," Henry continued, "I've just returned from doing a once-over to make sure everything's in order – and I hope you're as impressed with it as I am!"

Here, he paused a bit. No-one said or did anything except eye the door with apprehension.

"Come in, come in, there's no point in lollygagging," he said, gesturing towards the door.

And so, everyone filed into the corridor after Henry.

"These doors lead to your workstations," he narrated, pointing to the doors that lined the hallway. "You'll be handling both coding and hardware design, if need be. The latest computer hardware, and a direct line to Manufacturing, will be yours while you are here – after all, Amber is a task only suited for the best, and you boys and girls are the best of the best."

"But what exactly _is_ Amber?" Stephen asked, voicing the question everyone else in the room was most likely thinking at the moment.

Henry turned back to the group, an almost mischievious look in his eye, as if he were a child who'd just been given free reign over an entire toy store.

"Ah, that's the most impressive part."

At the end of the corridor, on the right side, lay a door – but this door was most unlike the others. For one, rather than being a simple door, it was keycoded; for another, it was surrounded by two large panes of glass.

Henry allowed the group to gather around the panes. Through them, it was clear that the hallway beyond the door was more of a tunnel raised by girders, beyond which lay the walls for a much larger room, much like the area where the turret testing track had been. These two structures were encased by an absolutely _massive_ empty area, with many maintenance platforms criss-crossing here and there, far above their heads.

Doug stared through the window in amazement. What could the room hold? What needed an area of this magnitude to support?

Once Henry seemed sure the gravity of what they were seeing had hit them, he entered the pin for the door, and waited for it to swing open.

"After you," he replied, gesturing to the hallway beyond.

Doug slowly crept along the dimly-lit hallway, very careful not to trip on the slightly uneven surface, nor on scattered chairs he could barely make out. And as he grew closer to the end of the tunnel, he could see clearer and clearer that there was some kind of… _field_ was spread across the hallway's terminus.

"It's just an Emancipation Field," Staltworth said from the back of the group as he pointed at the shimmering blue particles pulsing from one side of the hallway to the other. "It operates on a blacklist, so unless you have any banned materials, you should be fine."

And to demonstrate, he stepped through the field, and then back again.

Doug entered the pitch-dark room somewhat nervously. Even though he could see nary a thing, he could certainly _feel_ a presence there – a _large_ one, and knowing Aperture, probably destructive.

"Now, what is in this room," announced Henry as he brought up the rear, "is what you'll be working on, and what Aperture has been working on for the last twenty years. It is the summation of all our hopes and dreams, our desires, and of every possibility."

He flicked the switch.

Lamp after lamp flickered to life, and Doug's eyes followed the parts they lit; first, the massive chassis, hanging from the ceiling top, its smooth white cover reflecting the lamp above; then the supporting rings that held it there; then a small opening in the ground, sealed by a metal iris; then a dais, from which one could analyse directly the most important part-

He knew it wasn't human, that it was a computer, if robotic in nature, but rather than more appropriate terms, like 'central processing unit' or 'sensory housing and analysis compartment' or maybe even 'camera', the first word that came into his mind was '_head_'.

"This is GLaDOS," said Henry, gesturing at the machine's hea- the _casing that held the camera_, a note of pride in his voice. "It stands for Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System."

The machine named 'GLaDOS' hung from the ceiling by thick cables visible above the massive binding rings situated just below the roof; its chassis, rather than rectangular, was round and smooth, much like that of the turrets' – but unlike the turrets, its camera was situated in a separate compartment, a multi-layered rectangular hull, with an upside-down-saucer-shaped frontpiece attatched with a constraining band to the single camera lens. Monitors, dark from inactivity, surrounded the great rings at the top.

At the moment, the machine drooped, its camera facing the ground – but it seemed clear that this was not always the case.

It was at this point that Doug realised that this machine's casing had been the thing Terrance had been shuttling almost two years ago.

"GLaDOS is our attempt at the ultimate AI," said Henry. "It will think and act decisively, smartly, and best of all, faster than Black Mesa. At first, it will only being used in a position of analysis, but eventually, we hope to have it control _all_ of Aperture Science's major operations directly."

An uneasy feeling was beginning to buzz in the back of Doug's brain. A computer controlling all of Aperture? He would like to believe it could happen, but if this 'Amber' behemoth had problems anything _close_ to the ones plaguing Code Blue's…

And what was with duplicating Code Blue's efforts anyway? If they needed this work done, they could have _easily_ approached them and asked to work on it jointly, and they would have obliged! Instead, they decided to bifurcate Code Blue in two in order to basically do the _exact same thing_, only on a grander scale!

Besides all that, there was the name – _Genetic Lifeform_? Perhaps it meant that they were aiming for the intelligence of a genetic lifeform, or maybe they eventually aimed to have AI-controlled 'humans' – or perhaps it was something else, something that he wasn't quite grasping. Whatever the case, he felt very uneasy about it.

_But_, a voice said in his ear, _you feel uneasy about a lot of things – none of which have had any significance._

The voice was right. Now was the time to listen – he could think about paranoid fantasies some other time.

"-and they gave it a robotic form," Henry was saying, "because they felt it most natural for an artificial intelligence to _have_ one – after all, why would you want to live your days in some beige boxes in a server room? To not alienate the AI – to give it some sense of self – they decided to give it some kind of analogue in the real world."

"_Sorry, I zoned out there,"_ Doug whispered to Stephen. "_What did I miss?_"

"_Since the intro? Nothing much, just a rundown of the history of the project,_" he replied. "_He seems to be avoiding including himself in the group of people who made this thing._"

"_Perhaps I was right about him messing something up_."

"_Or perhaps he wants to avoid the idea that he himself had something to do with their reassignment. You know, create the impression that he too got reassigned, try and get them on his side and all that._"

That _did_ sound more logical.

"_So, anything juicy?_"

"_Not really – just talking about how important AI is to the company, how Caroline Gladys herself started the project twenty years ago – although it doesn't sound like she had much direct involvement in it – and some of the programming work that went into it._"

"_Oh_." Just another piece of the puzzle, it seemed – but the pieces still didn't seem to fit.

"-unfortunately, that team recently got reassigned to the Aperture Safety Door project. And now- well, we needed a new team, and you are it, and, well, here we are."

Aperture _Safety Door_? Doug dearly hoped that was just a wacky codename and not something they were actually planning to bring out.

"So, I'll leave you to get acquainted with your new workstations. Meeting in a half-hour in room B2. Dismissed."

"Isn't this exciting?" whispered Susan as the group began to file out of the room.

Doug gave her a weary glance - exciting _wasn't_ the word _he'd_ use.

* * *

><p>The workstations were, as he'd expected, far better than the ones for Code Blue. For one, they were encased an a sleek beige case with rounded corners, the Aperture logo emblazoned in orange on the sides – far better to look at day in and out than the off-yellow rectangle cases in Code Blue's office.<p>

The specs themselves were, suffice to say, pretty good. The computer featured an eight-hundred megahertz processor with five-hundred-and-twelve megabytes of RAM, according to the boot screen, which was certainly nothing to sneeze at. But the best part was that the operating system had a proper graphical user interface – sure, command lines were powerful, but his work already involved remembering enough arcane commands without having to do that for non-programming tasks as well.

It was when he was idly experimenting with the autocomplete feature that his computer booped to remind him that an hour had passed. He sighed, put his workstation to sleep, and exited the office.

"I don't like this," came the voice of Stephen, who had apparently been waiting outside, as he closed the door. "Separate offices isn't very conductive for sharing ideas or collaborative thinking."

"I suppose they want us to shoot emails at each other," replied Doug.

"Yeah, that's what I thought. It's not the same at all."

Stephen was right, of course – the intricacies and real-time-ness of speech could hardly be captured in an email.

"Well, we should probably get to that meeting."

"Yeah."

And with a frown on his face Stephen began to continue down the hallway, with Doug following in his wake.

* * *

><p>The meeting was the usual middle-management stuff, the same kind of meetings they'd gotten with Code Blue. GLaDOS had similar directives to Blue – an artificial intelligence designed to help them out-compete Black Mesa – but instead of smaller tasks like exploratory probes or artificial assistants, GLaDOS was aimed at far grander designs.<p>

Staltworth quickly covered the major areas that they wanted to aim for - GLaDOS would, eventually, make hiring and firing recommendations based on performance, and recommendations into which field of development they should pursue next; later, intelligent maintenance of the power generation and security of the entire facility.

And much like Blue, there were vastly unrealistic 'schedules' that Doug supposed were more to give workers a goal so they worked harder, rather than any serious attempt at estimation of the work at hand.

At the end of the meeting, the group sidled along the hallways together towards the cafeteria, for it was almost time for lunch. Doug took this time to reflect over the day's events, and as he did, his mind returned, once again, to the small slip of paper lying in his employee locker, its header emblazoned 'BLACK MESA INDUSTRIES".

It was time for him to make a decision. He was fed up with the politics, tired of the misdirection. He'd give it another year, and then, if things didn't improve, he'd resign.

Yes, he told himself, nodding as if it settled the matter. That would be the best course of action.

And who knows – perhaps Black Mesa could provide him with the thing he desperately needed – a reason to feel excited about doing _science_ again.


	8. Space To Breathe

**Smooth Jazz Fails**  
><strong>Chapter 8: Space To Breathe<strong>

"_Hello there._"

The now familiar whirs of motors echoed through the passageway to Amber's chamber. Doug sighed as he walked along the path – he knew what was coming next.

"_You are unauthorised,_" said a low, feminine robotic voice._ "We don't like that very much. Please remain calm while your life is ended in five, four…_"

Beyond the shimmering blue field, Caleb and Henry stood on the stairway, sillouetted by Amber's bright, golden headlamp. Henry made a 'kill' signal with his hand, and the camera case drooped down again, its light flickering out.

Doug cautiously stepped through the emancipation grill and made his way towards the stairway.

"Ah, Doug, good to see you!" said Henry, waving from the platform. "It's been a hell of a morning."

Doug briefly considered sniping back at Henry that that phrase didn't really differentiate the morning sufficiently from the rest of the day, then thought better of it.

It was March 22, and the break Doug Rattmann had promised himself had failed to materialise. As it turned out, GLaDOS did indeed have serious problems, in the same areas as Code Blue – issues of _morality_. In both cases, the AI would scan a hundred simulated properties about an object, organise them into a multi-table matrix, calculate overlapping parameters based on advanced learning algorithms – and then just decide that the object was bad news.

But, somehow, in GLaDOS the issues were much _worse_. The faulty decisions Blue had made were amplified in GLaDOS, perhaps due to the project's immense size, or, less charitably, the expertise of the previous programmers.

And Doug, along with the rest of the team, had been forced to work over the holiday break to resolve them.

"We just uploaded a new build to the server," he simply replied as he climbed the green perspex stairs to the platform above. "It includes some fixes for h- for _the_ decision module."

He'd caught himself this time, but the pronoun kept slipping in – into all of their speeches, he'd noticed. It wasn't that the behemoth seemed intelligent – Blue had been the same – but he couldn't shake an uneasy feeling about the robot whenever he was in the same room.

He knew it was silly, but he felt like she- _it_ was… well…

Alive.

"Good, that's good."

Doug glanced at Henry, who stood at the end of the platform overlooking Amber, notebook in hand as always. He was looking into the now-dormant eye of the machine – not just looking, but staring intently, as if trying to see the minor imperfections in the lens, or the individual LEDs that made up the camera lamp.

Or perhaps as if he were looking for something much deeper than that, something on the cusp of memory, or the precipice of reason; something he could see but not quite grasp.

Doug approached him slowly – he still needed authorisation to commit the build to Amber's databanks.

"Uh…"

In an instant, Henry spun on the spot, causing Doug to start somewhat.

"So, new build, you say? Hopefully we can make some progress then."

He scribbled something down on his notepad, and then looked back at Doug.

"Missed all the fun this morning – we had to throw the kill switch."

He pointed at the glass panels of the observatory room, behind the computers of which Susan was sitting. Susan waved back at the two, then gave the thumbs up signal to Henry.

Doug glanced at her, and then to the machine. "You have a… strange idea of fun, Henry."

Henry shrugged. "Hey, we're lucky to be working on this."

Doug shifted his glare to Henry – if what he suspected was true, luck had nothing to do with it.

Eventually, he sighed. "Your idea of 'luck' is an odd one as well."

* * *

><p>There was another meeting that day, but Doug spent a lot of the time thinking instead of listening to the others talk.<p>

It was not that Doug wasn't getting paid extra for his overtime – indeed, the cheque he received from Aperture Science each week had a figure double the usual – or that he didn't appreciate the extra money, but he'd much prefer to be at home, working on his hobbies, or staring at the stars through his telescope, rather than debugging arcane code.

On the other hand, though, he needed to eat, and eating required money.

Much like Code Blue, GLaDOS was divided up into modules – Base, Decision, Context, Personality and Memory. But there was also a sixth: the 'Intellect' Module. Unlike the others, they were not allowed to access the code for this one, for, as Staltworth had told them, it was being worked on by an 'outside group', and there was something about 'trade secrets' as well.

Everything in GLaDOS's code was dependant on the Intellect Module. The Base Module, through which the others interacted with the hardware, sent things through it before sending the results to the hardware or to other modules, if need be. And it was interwoven throughout the project, to the point that it was inextricable.

"It's better this way," Henry had told them. "We can free our minds of having to worry about the low-level stuff and really get some innovation going."

But the Intellect Module was updated infrequently; if they found any bugs in the decisions GLaDOS made that could be traced to it, they would have to work around the flaws themselves until they were fixed. To Doug, rather than efficiency, all it suggested was another pin on the cogboard of a project in shambles.

Perhaps it was the result of a recent culling of employees by upper management, and they were just regaining their feet, but if experience had anything to say, Doug very much doubted that they would.

"Think about it!" Henry was now saying. "Every generation gets something new. Newton got gravity and lenses. For Faraday, it was magnetism. Rutherford and Bohr got the atom. Einstein, relativity. And those NASA cowboys got the moon. All the _easy_ stuff is taken."

He took a breath, looked around the room, and smiled. "We're on the _bleeding edge_! Artificial intelligence is the next frontier, you all mark my words."

"But sir," chimed Stephen, "every time we run the simulation, she takes a tenth of a picosecond to try and kill the first object it meets."

"Last time it was a sixteenth of a picosecond. We're making progress, we'll make it soon enough."

He grinned. "I'm telling you, this is our generation's moon shot."

Doug silently glanced away. He would have preferred the moon.

* * *

><p>The cafeteria bustled with activity, as it often did at lunch time, and Doug found himself weaving between groups of people as he made his way back to the table with his food.<p>

Lunch had fallen into a familiar pattern. Stephen would start off by telling some story or another, and then he'd ask the others for their own tales. At that moment, Caleb was describing at great length his daughter Alix's attempts at conducting scientific experiments in his living room.

"And then I entered the room, and she was standing there in the middle of the _hugest_ pile of sodium bicarbonate. And the look on her face was _priceless_."

He made an expression somewhere in between shocked and beaming to demonstrate.

"And when I asked her why, she said 'I wanted to work with science, like you, Daddy!'" He smiled, shaking his head. "Hard to stay mad at a kid like that."

Stephen nodded, grinning as he did.

"Say, Stephen, do you have any kids?" asked Susan.

"Nah, I'm too old to settle down," Stephen replied. "Besides, I'm practically married to this place, and to science. I'd just be a burden on a family."

"Aw, shucks, you're selling yourself short," said Susan. "I'm sure anyone would understand."

Stephen shook his head. "Nah, these old bones gave up chasing women eons ago. And I'm alright with that. Because, it's what we're doing here that's truly amazing, and that's good enough for me."

Susan slanted her eyebrows. "Man, you _have_ been working here too long. You're sounding like Staltworth right there."

Henry was the only one of the team not at the table – he ate alone in his office. Doug had learned long ago not to question those kinds of things.

"I guess I do," Stephen replied. "Perhaps he and I still believe in the magic this place used to have."

He paused for a few seconds, presumably for dramatic effect.

"Anyway, what about you, Susan? Got any stories to share?"

"Oh, perhaps." Susan smiled with malicious glee. "There _was_ this one time when Edward – he was one of the interns – had got his tie stuck in the rotor for-"

Doug's attention drifted away from the conversation - he cared little for workplace gossip.

He didn't know what he was expecting, but he'd been feeling anxious all day, as if something big was going to happen at any moment. He idly glanced around the room, but the normalcy of bustling people getting or eating their lunch, talking to each other, and generally enjoying themselves was all that met his eyes.

He scolded himself. What was he worrying himself for? It wasn't as if, say, Jeremy were going to burst in and announce some broad conspiracy he'd uncovered, right?

Nodding his confirmation of this resolve, Doug returned to the large amount of what could vaguely be described as "food" still remaining on his plate, determined to push the affair from his mind.

"_Pssst_," came a rather familiar whisper from his left.

Doug glanced to see who it was - then had to double-take, as there was an equally familiar pair of glasses and unruly hair crouching beside him.

"Jere-!"

"_Shh!"_ Jeremy looked around to make sure the rest of the table was still concentrating on Susan's tale. "_People who, well, talk at volumes… uh, below other people's range of hearing generally, well, do so for a reason._"

Doug nodded – he did have a point.

"_I've got something to tell you, Mr Ratt- uh, Doug. I've found something weird – almost peculiar, really – and I think you ought to know it._"

"_There's always something peculiar going on, Jeremy,_" whispered Doug.

"_No, this is different. _

_"Why not go to your boss about it?"_

Jeremy's eyes darted from side to side. "_I don't trust him, sir."_

Now Doug was worried. What had Jeremy encountered that got him _this_ upset?

"_What is it?"_ he whispered.

Jeremy took a deep breath.

"_I was-"_

"Doug, who are you talking to?"

Jeremy froze, making a sound not unlike a mouse being trodden on. Doug glared over the table at Stephen.

"I was chatting with, uh, Jeremy here about how he's been doing with the team."The expression Stephen now wore was one of concern."Doug, there's no-one there."

Doug's glare intensified. "What do you mean, he's right-"

He looked again to his left, but Jeremy had disappeared.

The gears in his brain whirred into overdrive. He felt at first angry with Stephen - Jeremy was about to give him another puzzle piece, perhaps the missing one that would bind the collection together into a recognisable masterpiece, and he'd scared him off, sneaking away as stealthily as he'd come!

But soon a small voice entered his head, peppering it with questions. _How likely would it be for Jeremy to have come up to you to discuss something secret just as you were thinking of that exact scenario? How had the somewhat clumsy Jeremy been so stealthy in the first place? Did you remember your pills this morning__?_ The more he pondered these questions, the more unsure he became of their answers, until he wasn't at all sure Jeremy had been there in the first place.

"Uh... nothing. I was- just nothing."

He looked down at his food, avoiding the stares of his team. He'd have to make sure he took his afternoon pills, then, least he descend any further into madness - and the last thing he needed was another team thinking he was mad.

He sighed and prodded his potato. Just when he thought he was getting some answers, fate seemed to dangle them before him, tantalisingly close, but just out of reach.

* * *

><p>"Hey, Doug, about earlier-"<p>

It was after lunch, and Stephen had caught up with him in the hallway outside the cafeteria.

"I'm alright, Stephen. No need to worry."

Stephen nodded and walked on ahead, although the worried look on his face did not subside.

True to his promise to himself, Doug purposely made his way to the employee storeroom, grabbed the vial, emptied out two pills, and swallowed down the medicine his addled mind clearly needed. He couldn't say it made him feel any better, but hopefully he wouldn't be having any more visions.

It was on his way back, while he was thinking deeply about a particularly tough-to-squash bug, that an idea came to mind.

It was a strange one, and one that would certainly not be kosher with the higher ups; Doug, at first, automatically pushed it to the back of his mind. But it kept pushing its way back to the surface, even as he worked on the aforementioned bug back at his office, and it was half-an-hour later, as it surfaced once again, that he decided that he might as well commit to it.

He needed something _fun_ to do.

He sat up, opened a draw, and rummaged around for a blank zip drive. Once he found one, five-hundred megabytes in size, he inserted it into the drive and opened a window to the file server for his former project, Code Blue.

Surprisingly, his user account still had permission to access that server, and he began to download the files to the zip drive – all except for the Decision Module. He then created a new file on the drive with the same name as the Decision Module had had and opened it up. Finally, he renamed the disk to _CODE_SATURN._

The idea that had been brimming in his head was based on the fact that most of the problems they'd been having was in Directive Three – the Decision Module, the section of code that the AI used to make the right decision, and arguably made the artificial 'intelligence' truly intelligent. If he could write an 'unintelligent' intelligence – one that only had to make simple decisions from a narrow range of commands – and show that it could be useful to his superiors, perhaps he could convince them that, as much as it would be great to make history with the first true intelligence, it'd be better to work up to it than to tackle the problem at once.

Then again, if Management were convinced Black Mesa was working on something, nothing could stray them from the path. Still…

He'd only work on it briefly each day, but he thought he could get a working (if buggy) prototype up and show his superiors his work. Then, if he could convince them of its utility…

Well, it was at least worth a shot. And hey, it could help get the juices flowing if he stalled on a problem with Code Amber.

Doug cricked his hands, smiled, and began to type. Perhaps finally he could actually look forward to work for a change.


End file.
